A Tahoe tourist won the jackpot. But the casinos are just another part of Tahoe's illusion.
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Late one night, I was driving down Tahoe’s dark and winding roads when the horizon suddenly brightened with an unmistakable neon glow.
The Tahoe Biltmore’s towering sign flickered as we pulled into the parking lot in the back of the casino. It was 3 a.m. and I was a bored high school kid on a late-night quest with some friends. We were ravenous, and one of our go-to spots for cheap eats was the Biltmore. For $1.99, you’d get a huge plate piled up with greasy eggs and hashbrowns, served at all hours of the night. The soundtrack to our meal was the ring, bang, click of the slot machines.
The Bilte’s $1.99 breakfast special was one of Tahoe’s best-kept local secrets.
But sadly, those cheap breakfast days in Tahoe are long gone, along with affordable rent, empty ski runs and traffic-free roads. The Bilte, as we used to call it, still serves eggs and potatoes in the restaurant just next to the slot machines. But it’ll cost you $9.99.
I’ve long had a fascination with Tahoe’s casinos, which represent the best and the worst of Lake Tahoe. I don’t gamble. I go there to escape. Neon lights make everything more exciting and dazzling. To me, the casinos are like a fleeting one-night love affair, and every so often, I need my fix. I’ll step inside a casino and enter another world that whisks me away, down the aisles between the poker tables, across the mesmerizing carpet, to a dark club with disco lights and pounding music. Sometimes, I’ll sit down at the blackjack table and give the casino all my money in exchange for free drinks.
But the magic fades as soon as dawn arrives. The next morning, smelling like stale cigarettes and with a piercing headache, I’m desperate to get out of Nevada and go back to the California side of Tahoe and a sense of normalcy. But mornings in casinos are also prime time for people watching. As I head toward the casino’s front doors, about to emerge back into the daylight, I walk past all the devoted slot machine aficionados still pulling the levers at 9 in the morning.
You might think that casinos don’t really fit the whole vibe and feel of Lake Tahoe. But I’d argue the opposite. Casinos are just as much a part of Tahoe’s authentic experience as skiing or hiking or swimming in the deep blue itself. Love them or hate them, they are here to stay and they play a major role in the basin.
Gambling has long been a backbone of Nevada’s economy, and the same is true of Lake Tahoe. In the 1950s, when William Harrah expanded his casino empire to South Lake Tahoe, gambling was already a nefarious pastime throughout the basin. Poker chips and blackjack games were common staples of Tahoe’s nightlife. By then, the Cal-Neva Club on Tahoe’s North Shore had become one of the area’s hottest venues, attracting celebrities, politicians and mobsters.
When Harrah came to South Tahoe, his casino operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (The shutdown orders at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 marked the rare occasion when the casinos in Tahoe were closed.) By the 1960s, gambling was the single biggest tourist attraction in Lake Tahoe, though winter recreation was fast growing and would soon overshadow the casinos. Today, the casinos compete with recreation as the main draw to Lake Tahoe. And still, the casino corridor of Stateline is a hub where thousands of tourists gather almost every single day.
“The impact of gambling on growth within the basin would be difficult to overestimate,” wrote Douglas H. Strong, in his seminal book on Tahoe history, “Tahoe: From Timber Barons to Ecologists.”
In the 1970s, casino development was in overdrive at Stateline on the south shore of Lake Tahoe. Harrah wanted to expand his casino to an 18-story hotel. And Harvey’s also laid out plans for a massive development on the lake. According to Strong, Tahoe’s then-nascent environmental regulatory agency was still working out the kinks in its system and at that time, a major loophole existed for developers. That 60-day loophole is how several of Stateline’s casinos were “approved by default” and why casinos rise so high and shine so bright you can see them from most anywhere along the shoreline in Lake Tahoe. (That loophole was fixed soon after.)
Today, the casinos are inherently part of the Tahoe experience. For some, they represent the glitz, glamor and hope of a dream vacation. For others, the casinos embody everything ruinous about Lake Tahoe — crowds, cigarettes, gambling, all the vices.
As for me, the casinos are just another part of Tahoe’s illusion.
You see, some people come to Tahoe to escape the city and find peace and quiet in nature. Some people come to Tahoe for a wild and crazy family reunion. Or maybe it’s a bachelorette party. Or a college roommate’s wedding.
And some people come to Tahoe with an extra large Coca-Cola cup full of quarters, hoping to strike it rich at the slot machines. Their days blend together in the dark, dizzy corners of the casinos.
For all, the promises of Tahoe are not what they seem.
Looking for peace and quiet? If I were you, I’d keep driving way beyond Tahoe and go somewhere deep in the Nevada desert. The morning after every birthday/bachelor party is greeted with a first rate, high-altitude hangover. (Pro tip: Drink Tahoe tap water.)
And the slot machines keep spinning, eating one quarter at a time. No matter how much you feed the machine, it wants more. The wheels keep spinning and spinning until dawn greets a new day, but inside the casino doors, it’s still as dark as ever.
But then, maybe a few times a year, the wheels stop and fate is written. Someone hits the jackpot.
In March, a poker player took home . In April, a tourist on vacation from Waco, Texas, won more than $100,000 playing slots at Harrah’s in Stateline. The day before, someone else had won nearly $600,000 at Caesars. In February 2020, a woman’s luck was over the top when she won $1.3 million with a three-card poker hand she played on a table at Harvey’s.
The winning slot machine was called Blazing Sevens. It’s a casino classic that’s stood the test of time. A slot machine maker created the game in the 1970s in Chicago. You win when the fiery sevens line in a row.
The winner, who chose to remain anonymous, had been playing the slots for two hours.
Two hours of sitting there. Two hours of free drinks. Two hours of the ringing and singing of casino games. Of cigarette smoke. Of pulling the lever again and again. Of watching the three columns spin and spin and spin. You have to admire their tenacity and persistence.
The winner pulled the lever and each of the spinning wheels stopped on a fiery number seven. The slot machine spit out winnings that totaled $317,257.71. In a press release, the lucky player said they plan to use their winnings to buy an electric car and put a down payment on a new home. (Apparently slot machines can be one person’s answer to the housing crisis?)
Sometimes, Tahoe dreams do come true. But I think my odds are higher when I stick to people watching.
