Roy A. Hardy was born in South Dakota in 1886. Having been raised in mining camps, he went to Tonopah and Goldfield in 1905 during their boom days. There, he knew or met many of the leading figures of the day: Jim Butler, Harry Stimler, Tex Rickard, Charles Schwab, and George Wingfield. The early meeting with Wingfield began a business association that lasted for forty years. His major activities have always been in mining and prospecting. A brief tenure on the University of Nevada Board of Regents was his only venture into public office.

After completing his education at the University of Nevada Mackay School of Mines, Hardy returned again to mining. Times had become harder; the mining booms in western and central Nevada were past. He became a consultant and active mining engineer, reevaluating and rebuilding worked-over mines, and "occasionally" discovering a new one. With his partner, Alex Wise, Hardy tried to revive the Comstock in the 1920s, and built an extensive plant and mill at American Flat. Other places he worked included Wonder, where he became friendly with Vernon Adams and his small daughter, Eva. Hardy and his wife, the former Bonnie Thoma, lived and worked in several more mining towns and prospects, the best of which, according to Hardy, was the Getchell mine in Humboldt County.

It was through Hardy's efforts during his tenure as a regent of the University of Nevada that the Jot Travis Student Union on the university campus came into beingone of his proudest achievements. A long acquaintance with the family of the late Jot Travis allowed Regent Hardy to convince Wesley E. Travis, Jot Travis's son, that he should endow the building at the university in honor of his father.

Roy Hardy's oral history is not a long story. His extreme modesty prevented him from including some of the more colorful aspects of his life and the honors that he had earned. Hardy's reminiscences include geological evaluations of the various mining camps in which he had worked, brief sketches of some of the famous men he had met, and snatches of every-day life in the mining towns.