In the cold Minnesota winters, he trapped to make money. There is an oft-repeated story about Don as a young man. Although over the years he waited tables and dealt 21 around Las Vegas, slot machine was his mother tongue. Some ran blackjack games, keno and bingo, and craps others, like Don Laughlin, operated slot machines. They came from all over the country to Nevada to escape the constant pressure from the law. Nevada was friendlier to them than their home states we. Like his fellow pioneers Sam Boyd, Benny Binion, Jackie Gaughan, Jay Sarno, Bill Harrah, Warren Nelson, Si Redd, and John Ascuaga, he was not a native Nevadan, but they were all already gamblers.
There was a river, pleasant weather except in the midst of summer, and it was close to tourist destinations in Arizona and California.
It stayed that way until Don Laughlin flew over it and saw possibilities. The workers left and the town dried up and died. It was called South Pointe and for a time in the 1940s the motel and café had catered to miners and construction workers. In 1964 he purchased a small motel at the southern tip of Nevada.