Casinos in California Map

California’s casino scene is almost entirely tribal, with around 65 tribal casinos run by more than 60 nations, plus more than 80 commercial card rooms concentrated around Los Angeles. This casinos in California map groups every property by region, from the dense ring of tribal resorts in the San Diego backcountry to the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs and the Sacramento area in the north. The minimum age to gamble is 18 or 21 depending on the venue, and there are no Las Vegas style commercial casinos in the state.

How casinos are spread across California

California has more tribal casinos than almost any state, and they follow the reservations rather than a single resort strip. The heaviest concentration is in the San Diego County backcountry, where roughly ten tribal casinos sit in the hills east and north of the city, from Barona and Sycuan near El Cajon to Pala and Pauma up toward the Riverside County line. For a visitor based in San Diego this is the closest cluster, a short drive inland from the coast.

The next belt runs through the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley. Yaamava’ at San Manuel sits in the hills above San Bernardino and is the largest casino in the state, while Pechanga at Temecula is one of the largest on the West Coast. East of there the desert resorts gather around Palm Springs, where the Agua Caliente band runs floors in town and at Rancho Mirage, and Morongo’s tower marks the freeway approach from Los Angeles.

Northern California carries its own groups. The Sacramento area and the Gold Country hold Thunder Valley at Lincoln, Sky River at Elk Grove, Cache Creek west of the city, and a string of foothill resorts. The Bay Area’s casino is Graton at Rohnert Park, the closest large floor to San Francisco, with smaller properties scattered through the wine country and Lake County. The Central Valley adds floors near Fresno and Bakersfield, including the new Hard Rock at Tejon, and a thin line of casinos runs up the far north toward the Oregon coast. Separate from all of this, the Los Angeles area holds the state’s commercial card rooms, which are a different kind of gambling covered further down.