Barona Resort & Casino history

In 1975, the Seminole Tribe of Florida had established a high-stakes bingo operation that generated significant revenues for education, welfare, and economic development.

Butterfield (1979), Barona Group of the Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians v.

Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 480 United States 202, 207 (1987). The Cabazon reservation is located in Coachella, 7 miles (11 km) from Indio, California, and 18 miles (29 km) from Palm Springs in Riverside County.

Following the three cases that made Indian gaming legal in United States, the people of Viejas voted to open a 100,000 square-foot casino in 1991.

Eventually the tribe accumulated enough money to expand into a bona fide casino, the Big Top Barona Casino, that opened in 1994.

Three more compacts were signed, including Barona’s compact, on October 8, 1999.31 Gaming compacts limited Indian casinos to 2,000 slot machines; Viejas, Barona, and Sycuan maxed out their allotted quota at the turn of the twenty-first century.

He previously worked at the Sandia Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for three years, and at the Ute Mountain Casino in Durango, Colorado, for seven years.25 Penhall resigned in 2008 and Sycuan returned to managing their own casino for a second time.

33. “Viejas Casino to Add 150-Room Hotel,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 31, 2011.

Viejas owns an outlet shopping mall that grossed approximately $20 million in 2013.

9. Don Speer, interview by Ethan Banegas, Barona Resort and Casino, November 25, 2015.

Don Speer, interview by Ethan Banegas, Barona Resort and Casino, December 11, 2016.