With Casino Gambling, Dodge City Looks to Past for Future

This is Dodge, after all: a town built on cattle drives, saloons, and gambling.

Dodge City knows that gambling was a big part of its past, and hopes to use casinos to build a brighter future. Tuesday, the Ford County Commission approved permits and plans for a casino submitted by the Dodge City Resort and Gaming Company. Next, the town will anxiously await the approval of the Kansas Lottery Commission.

If all goes well, the casino will contain 800 slot machines, 20 table games, and three restaurants, as well as join onto a 125-room hotel. Large amounts of retail space would border the casino, and livestock areas, including equestrian space, a 4-H complex, and several rodeo centers including a state-of-the-art rodeo facility would be built. This is Dodge, after all: a town built on cattle drives, saloons, and gambling.

The Alhambra Saloon and Long Branch Saloon are names from the pages of history, reaching back to the cattle drives along the Great Western Trail in the second half of the nineteenth century. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson ran Faro games, and Doc Holliday played poker there.

Dodge, while still important in the meatpacking industry, would love a return to its former grandeur as the "Queen of the West", and casino gambling would be a big part of that.

“There will be people in this area that will come just for the casino,” said Steve Joseph, president of Dodge City Resort and Gaming. “But we don't want to just shift money inside around southwest Kansas. We want to bring money from all over the United States by way of tourists, and internationally also. Dodge City has a brand that is known and can be sold internationally.” 

Here's to Dodge reviving memories of its colorful past, and using the opportunities provided by gambling to reinstill a sense of history. Wyatt's ghost must surely smile at the idea of the cards flickering around the tables of the town he once safeguarded.