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Oklahoma looks set to get its latest casino development as one of the state’s gambling houses gets ready to unveil its most recent expansion. The Golden Mesa Casino’s latest development is due to open its doors on Friday, August 22, after the venue underwent a $78 million refit. With a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled for 11 am, gamers will be able to enjoy a variety of new facilities at the centre, just outside the city of Guymon.
The Texas County casino, which originally opened in 2019, is now aiming to be one of the premier Oklahoma gaming options. The redeveloped venue is set to feature a brand new, full-service, restaurant, as well as 99 hotel rooms for players from outside of the area.
There will also be spaces in the site’s car park for 45 recreational vehicles, with the facility featuring a laundry room, dog park, and bath house.
Meanwhile, guests will have an expanded range of games to choose from, including 1,100 electronic games and 10 table games. There is good news for the local region’s employment figures, too, with the upgraded facility employing somewhere in the region of 250 people, up more than 40 per cent from the 175 members of staff working there when it opened six years ago. Casino bosses will also be hoping that it can continue making money, with the center earning a $4 million profit in its first year.
The Golden Mesa is something of a joint venture, with the building itself owned by the Shawnee Tribe, under the leadership of tribal chief Ben Barnes, but the venue’s operations run by Global Gaming Solutions, which is owned by the Chickasaw Nation.
Friday’s ceremony will be attended by Barnes, alongside his tribe’s Ambassador Ron Sparkman and Development President Chris Floyd. They will be joined by the Chickasaw Nation’s Governor Bill Anoatubby and Secretary of State Bill Lance and accompanying them will be Global Gaming Solutions CEO Skip Seeley, Guymon City Manager Mike Shannon, and Guymon Mayor Kim Peterson.
The project, which hopes to bring more visitors to the Oklahoma Panhandle region, has been in the pipeline for almost two years. Work started on the extension in September 2023, and both customers and management will be looking forward to doubling the size of the casino’s floor to 80,000 square feet. The new hotel facility had its topping out ceremony on September 11 last year, with the casino giving out commemorative keychains, which offered their holders the chance to win special prizes at the facility, in honor of the move.
The work to expand the building has cost around $78 million, up slightly from the $70 million estimated when work started two years ago. The Golden Mesa’s loyal customer base will also be waiting to see what kind of big jackpots and prizes come out of the expanded casino. As of the fall of 2024, the venue was offering prizes of $1,000 and up on a regular basis, with the “hot seat” promotion, where someone was picked at random based on where they were sitting to win a prize, popular with guests.
Although outsiders to the Sooner State may not automatically associate it with gambling, Oklahoma has one of the highest numbers of casinos anywhere in America. In fact, with 139 legal and regulated facilities, all of which are run in one form or another by 31 of the state’s Native American tribes, it has the second largest number of brick and mortar gambling houses of any state, beaten only by the inevitable top dog, Nevada, which has more than 200.
Remarkably, considering the sheer number of casinos across the state, casino gambling has only been legal in Oklahoma for a little over 20 years. Since then, casinos have contributed billions of dollars to the state’s economy, with the 2024 financial year seeing them generate more than $210 million to Oklahoma’s public coffers. Meanwhile, the overall size of the Sooner casino industry was worth more than $3.47 billion that financial year, but despite that Oklahoma was barely in the top 30 states by how much gambling houses raised for the public purse.
While the Golden Mesa will be hoping that its new expansion helps put it on the map and bring in new customers, it will still be far from being Oklahoma’s biggest casino. That honor goes to the WinStar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville. Owned and managed by the Chickasaw Nation, the site’s 55 poker tables and more than 10,000 electronic games make it not only the biggest casino in the state but, according to some gambling directories, the largest in the entire United States.