Next year, if the plan holds, 200 more hotel rooms and a spa will be added. When it opens in a few months, its interior will feature Navajo artwork and desert plants, nearly 1,100 slot machines, a high-stakes betting room, a convention space, a hotel with 90 rooms, a top-of-the-line restaurant and an oyster bar. Twin Arrows Resort and Casino, about 20 miles east of Flagstaff, Ariz., is a $150 million project with a gracefully curving rock-slab exterior accented by turquoise lighting. The Navajo Nation's fourth casino, according to the tribe's plans, will be even more attractive than Fire Rock.
There are card tables at the far end, a food court and a stylish wood-motif restaurant called Cheii Grill & Pub, which attempts to lure families as well as gamblers with a weekly seafood buffet and a 20-foot-wide TV.
Inside the Fire Rock Casino, more than 700 slot machines are lined up throughout the dimly lit gaming floor with the precision of a manicured lawn. Prominently located between Interstate 40 and the red-rock cliffs just east of Gallup, N.M., it's a shell of tensioned membrane more than two stories high, with a name that evokes its setting: Fire Rock. The Navajo Nation's first casino opened in 2008 with a dramatic design - a simple, massive structure shaped like a tent. Note: This story is part of a special HCN magazine issue devoted to travel in the West.
