![]() The opening act typically starred Bertha, an elephant Ascuaga bought from a circus museum in Wisconsin for $8,000 in 1962. One of the first additions was a 600-seat show room, dubbed the Circus Room, where the likes of Red Skelton, Liberace, Wayne Newton, Ella Fitzgerald, George Burns and Ray Charles preformed. ![]() Graves owned small Nugget casinos in Reno, Carson City and Yerington, Nev., before opening one in Sparks in 1955 and hiring Ascuaga as a manager.Īscuaga bought it in 1960, changed the name and soon began a variety of expansion projects that turned it into today’s 1,600-room property in two towers with a convention center and multiple restaurants. He got his start in the hospitality industry as a bellman at a lodge in Idaho where he met casino pioneer Dick Graves. ![]() He was born in Caldwell, Idaho, in January 1925, served in the Army as a young man and earned degrees in accounting at the University of Idaho and restaurant management at Washington State University. Ascuaga’s father moved to Idaho from Spain in the early 1900s. ![]()
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