Gary Tharaldson

A 73-year-old former gym teacher, Tharaldson built his fortune by purchasing and operating budget hotels. He bought his first, a Super 8 motel in North Dakota, in 1982. After selling 130 hotels to Goldman Sachs for $1.2 billion in 2006, Tharaldson invested in an ethanol plant, an aquifer in Arizona, and property in Nevada, Colorado, and Texas before returning to the hotel business, according to Forbes. He now owns 49 hotels across the country. Forbes pegs his net worth at $1 billion. But North Dakota could lose its richest resident to Las Vegas. Tharaldson, who says he loves Sin City and its mountains, has spent much of his time there in recent years. He has an office in Las Vegas, plus seven hotels and two real estate development projects. In what he says was a departure from his modest lifestyle, the small-town product splurged for a 45th-floor hotel condo in 2016 in the Waldorf Astoria on the strip, just a block from the Bellagio. Tharaldson says he and his wife may move permanently to Las Vegas after their youngest son graduates high school in two years.