Founder of Rosie’s Den, a popular roadside cafe, dies
Rosie Larsen, founder of Rosie’s Den, a cafe popular with travelers and lottery aficionados about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas, died on Friday, according to her staff.
Larsen, 89, opened the White Hills, Ariz., cafe in 1984. It became a popular eatery and stopping place for Nevadans trying to win the lottery, especially when the Powerball jackpot climbs.
Rosie’s Den, which is a favorite among truck drivers and travelers between Nevada and Arizona, was leveled by a fire blamed on a faulty circuit in 2011, but reopened in 2013.
In a 1985 interview, Larsen told the Review-Journal that she woke up one day in 1984 when she operating a cantina in Florida and decided to move in search of adventure. She decided to go West.
She found what she was looking for when she opened Rosie’s Den at what was then called the Boulder Inn, 19949 N. U.S Highway 93, about 30 miles south of Hoover Dam. The inn had been a watering hole for construction workers who worked on the dam in the 1930s.
Arizona made an impression on her during a 15,000-mile trip across North America she had taken years before moving there.
Larsen immediately became popular with travelers. “I couldn’t believe it, to be accepted so fast… It’s like I’ve always been here,” Larsen told the Review-Journal in 1985.
She allowed customers to camp at the 30-acre property if they had been drinking at her bar. She was also known to give away dinners not on the menu. Overheated travelers unfamiliar with the Mojave Desert were allowed to cool down or rest in a private room at Rosie’s.
Larsen, who was raised in Washington, had been staying at Infinity Hospice Care in Las Vegas, Rosie’s Den staff said Thursday. Her cause of death wasn’t immediately clear on Friday, but she had received chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2011, according to a Review-Journal story.
Once she moved from Florida to Arizona, Larsen said in 1985 that she didn’t look back. “Out here, there’s just something about it. It’s another adventure in my life, something I’ve never done.”
Contact Ricardo Torres at rtorres@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0381. Find him on Twitter: @rickytwrites.
