However, as the parent companies that owned Harrah’s in the wake of Bill Harrah’s death in 1978 expanded, they focused their attention, emphasis, and money on other jurisdictions like any good corporation, Harrah’s put its money where it got the best return. At its peak in the Bill Harrah era, Harrah’s was the crown jewel of the Reno gaming industry. Harrah’s did not fit that model, but it too was seriously outdated. But after just a decade of Indian gaming, it looked like a street in Virginia City after mining and the miners had packed up and left - a shadow of its former self with nothing but the boarded-up storefronts to bear witness to a glorious past.

The main thoroughfare through downtown Reno was once just behind downtown Las Vegas and the famous Strip for gaming revenue.

It was a small slot house on Virginia Street. The Little Nugget was even further out of sync with the times. That model worked fine in 1960 or 1970, but by the time the 21 st century arrived, it was an unsustainable model. The Bonanza was just a small hotel designed to take the overflow from the major hotels in the city it was meant to have a few slot machines to catch the loose change of its guests. Their business models were suited to 1970, not 2020, and they were undercapitalized, unable to update and expand to keep up with trends and competition. The most vulnerable were those like the Bonanza Inn and the Little Nugget. As a result of all the added competition, Reno has been under a 30-year siege that would put the Ottoman siege of Byzantium to shame.įor 30 years, casinos closing in the Reno area have been commonplace. Add to the tribal and commercial casinos the introduction of multi-state lotteries, Powerball (1992) and Mega Millions (1996). Over the decade between 19, Native tribes in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, and category-killer California, all of Reno’s feeder markets, opened casinos. The National Indian Gaming Regulatory Act passed in 1988 a year later, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois legalized casinos in 1990-1993, Colorado, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Indiana joined the industry. It has been well documented that the Reno casino industry has undergone dramatic changes in the last 30 years. The articles speak to the changing gaming environment in Reno.

List of closed reno casinos