Reading the oral history book, Every Light Was On, Bill Harrah and His Clubs Remembered, I came across mention of some club names that I have heard before but don't find listed in TCR, Campiglia/Wells, or Fuller's Index.... Perhaps someone can add some info. Here is the passage from the book that has piqued my curiousity, Dwayne Kling is interviewing Russel McLennan who started at Harrah's in '59 and at the time of the sit-down in '99 was VP of Special Casino Promotions for Harrah's Lake Tahoe. Sometimes these questions are just dropped into the course of the interview with little reference to chronological events or location and this is one of those confusing instances, see what you think.

KLING:

Harrah's, for the first few years, operated just the Lake Club. Then they operated the Stateline Country Club and Lake Club, and there came a time when just the Stateline Club was open year-round. Do you recall when that happened?

McLENNAN:

In July of 1959-Harrah's was getting ready for the Olympics in 1960, and they closed the Lake Club in the winter and kept the Country Club open. In December, when the showroom opened, we left the Lake Club closed except on the weekends or holidays, but we'd open the Lake Club in the summer all the time. The Lake Club was sold to Harvey's around 1966. It had been called the Thrifty Gambler for about two years, and it was the Lake Club for quite some time before that. (It was called the Thrifty Gambler because we lowered the limits on all the the games. We had fifty-cent tables, and we had twenty-five-cent crap games and ten-cent crap games, and I believe we did that for about two summers before it was sold to Harvey's.)

Addionaly, McLennan elswhere references working at the Thrifty Gambler.

Kinda confusing isn't it? I'm supposing that the "Lake Club" may be the first location Harrah operated from and not a real casino name. How about Thrifty Gambler? I have heard this name before but it isn't listed in any guide or as a license holder and no chips seem to exist. An in-house name, I wonder? As you know, things were pretty casual and fluid at those times. Lake Tahoe was just a kind of summer camp type deal, winter weather closing operations that time of year. Harrah, Fitzgerald, and Harvey Gross were buying, selling, closing and converting casinos, resturants, coffee shops and any structure they could aquire. So...Lake Club, Thrifty Gambler?