Roaring Camp Gun Collection – Harolds Club

3,000 guns, of which about 2,000 were displayed

1935 – 1993

Reno, NV

  • February 23, 1935 Harolds Club in a tiny space in Reno
  • famed billboards saying “Harolds Club or Bust” erected across the world
  • Roaring Camp was a specific room in Harolds Club
  • 1960s, the collection included some 3,000 guns, of which about 2,000 were displayed in the Roaring Camp Room, the Silver Dollar Bar, and elsewhere
  • 1964 I-80 freeway built
  • 1967 Raymond I. “Pappy” Smith died (80)
  • 1993 The Fitzgerald Group had bought Harolds Club from the Summa Corporation
  • May 3, 1994 the collection was sold to the Butterfield & Butterfield auction house of San Francisco and the guns were auctioned off

the original gun collection

  • 1946 Raymond Stagg, opened the Roaring Camp Club
  • The original gun collection
  • a few blocks from Harolds

http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/harolds-club-roaring-camp-gun-collection


Roaring Camp Gun Collection

  • John Fremont
  • Kit Carson
  • Jedediah Smith
  • .44 Colt owned by silent film cowboy star William S. Hart
  • pistols used in a Sept. 13, 1859 duel in which California Chief Justice David S. Terry fatally shot U.S. Sen. David C. Broderick
  • numerous Kentucky rifles
  • four-barreled flintlock
  • mid-nineteenth century percussion revolvers
  • revolvers possibly used by outlaw Jesse James
  • almost every Colt manufactured between 1836 and 1902
  • pistols carried by Napoleon when he invaded Russia
  • .32 caliber Smith & Wesson owned by Emperor Maximilian of Mexico
  • 1850 combination rifle and shotgun made for King William of Holland