Craig Hart Neilsen

Craig Hart Neilsen (August 31, 1941 in Logan, Utah — November 19, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada) was an American gaming industry executive who founded Ameristar Casinos, Inc. and formed the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation to fund scientific research and quality of life programs for people living with spinal cord injuries.

Cactus Pete's casino began as a gas station without electricity or phone service but was home to popular slot machines.

Two years later, Cactus Pete's, located in what would become Jackpot, Nevada, hired Neilsen Miller Construction to build the Desert Lodge, a 15-room motel.

On November 10, 1985, Neilsen was involved in an accident while driving in a snowstorm on an icy U.S. Highway 93 from Jackpot to his office in Twin Falls.

Neilsen was treated at hospitals in Twin Falls, Boise and Salt Lake City before being transferred to the Good Samaritan Rehabilitation Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.

Neilsen survived the accident but was rendered a quadriplegic; he was unable to move his arms and had minimal function only in his left hand.

In 1998, the company opened the Reserve Hotel Casino in Henderson, Nevada in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

The 2000 purchase of additional casinos in Kansas City and St. Charles, Missouri, from Station, doubled Ameristar's annual revenues.

Additional growth continued through the completion in August 2002 of a new facility in St. Charles much larger than the temporary casino it replaced.

Upon his death, the Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho memorialized its native son in an editorial titled "Remembering Craig Neilsen, a One-of-a-Kind Entrepreneur."

[9] In 2002, Neilsen established the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation to award grants to a broad spectrum of charities benefiting spinal cord injury (SCI) research and rehabilitation including mechanistic, translational, clinical and psychosocial research as well as quality of life programs, postdoctoral and spinal cord injury medicine fellowships and other projects throughout the United States and Canada.

Through his estate plan, Neilsen left 25 million shares of Ameristar stock, among other assets, to endow the Foundation.

[15] In September 2006, Craig Neilsen was an honoree at the Buoniconti Fund's Great Sports Legends Dinner and later named a charity golf tournament after him.