South Dakota Casinos Celebrate Twenty Year Anniversary

While anti-gambling factions continue to argue the social costs of expanded gambling, South Dakota openly proclaims legal casinos to have positively transformed Deadwood and the state.

Deadwood hosted a weeklong event to mark twenty years of legal casino gambling in the historic South Dakota town. The town, which was decaying and suffering tough economic times in the 1980s, now finds itself living on a revitalized economy based on tourism and gambling.

Using the colorful history of the mining town, which includes the shooting death of Wild Bill Hickock while playing poker, town leaders elected to gamble on gambling, and the results have left most residents happy.

After state permission to open gambling came in 1988, estimates were that gaming revenue might reach $100,000 a year. But tourists poured into the new casinos, generating an unexpected but most welcome $13.9 million in the first eight months of operation..

Over the twenty years of legal gambling, Deadwood casinos have produced $1.1 billion in revenue, resulting in almost $100 million for state and municipal governments, as well as crating thousands of jobs.

Tourists from foreign coutries unlikely to even consider South Dakota have been drawn by the dual features of Old West preservation with legal gambling.

“Despite the current economic climate, we’re using gaming funds to buck nationwide tourism trends,” Melissa Bump of the South Dakota Office of Tourism told PrarieBiz magazine. "Initial reports for 2009 from all regions in South Dakota indicate positive growth in visitation and spending.”