Casino Connection Nevada

Gaughan with the wind

by Staff

Jackie Gaughan is selling his interest in the El Cortez and walking away from the game.

Nevada regulators granted permission for the longtime casino owner to sell his stake in the property he has headed since 1963.

Gaughan’s Las Vegas activities span back to 1951. Since then, he has held a part of the Flamingo, Showboat, Plaza, Golden Nugget, Las Vegas Club, Gold Spike, Western Hotel and the oldest continuously operating hotel in the Las Vegas Valley, the El Cortez.

Gaughan was known best for the hospitality he brought to his casinos, for offering gamblers a fair game and for knowing most of them on a first-name basis.

“You never felt like you got screwed in his casinos,” Matt Weatherford, a longtime Las Vegas visitor and fan of Gaughan’s work, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “He respected the gambler’s intelligence.”

Gaughan got started in gaming as a sports and horse bet runner in Nebraska. His first casino ownership was a small interest in the Boulder Club on Fremont Street. After amassing a collection of Downtown casinos, he began selling them off in 2004, when he inked a deal with Barrick Gaming to offload the Gold Spike, Western Hotel, Las Vegas Club and Plaza.

The most recent transaction will transfer shares from the John D. Gaughan Family LLC to Exber and the Amended and Restated Irving Kenneth Epstein 1992 Living Trust Agreement. The deal also allows Gaughan to continue living at the hotel.