Renovations were completed and a grand reopening was held last month at the nine-year-old Shoshone Rose Casino & Hotel on the Wind River Reservation in Lander, Wyoming. The Eastern Shoshone Tribe hopes the upgrades, including a new hotel, will generate revenue to make up for plummeting gas and oil prices, which earlier in the decade brought in – million annually.
With the new 61-room hotel, Marketing Manager Mary Johnson said, “We’re going to be able to bring conferences from all over.” General Manager Sheila Matt, who joined the property earlier this year, noted
improved flights to the Riverton airport also will help bring in groups. “In the smaller casino 80 percent of our business came from within a 20-mile radius. We really want to hit the Rock Springs market, the Casper market,” Matt said.
The renovations added notable details to the property, such as the metal bars around the cashiers cage sculpted to follow the path of the Wind River, and wood pillars supporting parts of the roof logged from the Wind River mountains and crafted with chainsaws by Eastern Shoshone members. Tribal artists created the paintings in many of the hotel rooms. “You look around and you find something new every single day,” Matt said. She added future plans include an RV park and events center.
The tribe hopes to recoup the millions it borrowed to expand the casino, Matt said. Besides the casino and mineral leases, Matt added the tribe also owns a nursing home and expects additional revenue from developing land it recently purchased in nearby Riverton.
The casino and hotel employ 133 workers, Matt said, half of whom are enrolled in the 4,300-member Eastern Shoshone tribe. The reservation historically has had high unemployment and few private businesses providing jobs, Matt said. “We want tribal employment. We want to make sure that they succeed,” she commented.
The Shoshone Rose competes with the larger Wind River Hotel and Casino, owned by the Northern Arapaho Tribe, also located on the reservation.
