John Ascuaga

John Ascuaga, the son of Basque sheepherders who became a northern Nevada gambling icon after he bought a small coffee shop with a few slot machines in Sparks in 1960 and turned it into a major hotel-casino he operated for more than a half century, has died. He was 96. Ascuaga’s father moved to Idaho from Spain in the early 1900s. He was born in Caldwell, Idaho, in January 1925, served in the U.S. Army in his youth and earned degrees in accounting at the University of Idaho and restaurant management at Washington State University. Ascuaga was a bellman at an Idaho lodge when he met casino pioneer Dick Graves. who owned small Nugget casinos in Reno, Carson City and Yerington. In 1955, he opened another Nugget in Sparks and hired Ascuaga as his food operations manager. Ascuaga bought it in 1960 and soon began a variety of expansion projects that turned it into today’s 1,600-room property.