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1949
The Smiths, who owned and operated Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada appropriately named their casino Roaring Camp.
Generally, a roaring camp was “a gold-prospecting camp characterized by wild behavior, unrestrained drinking and gambling,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Specifically, Roaring Camp was an actual mining settlement in California’s Amador County, on the Mokelumne River where forty-niners prospected for gold.
Also, Roaring Camp was the name of the fictional California gold mining town in American author Bret Harte’s 19th century short story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”
Harolds’ Roaring Camp isn’t around anymore, but California’s Roaring Camp is, as a tourist spot, Roaring Camp Mining Co.
Source: Reno Evening Gazette (Nev.), March 30, 1949.
