Nevada

These Are America’s 5 Largest Casinos To Visit (And They’re Not In Nevada) – Islands

Published

2 weeks ago

February 14, 2026

These Are America’s 5 Largest Casinos To Visit (And They’re Not In Nevada) – Islands

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Although Las Vegas has been voted America’s most fun city and is known as the gambling capital of the world due to its sheer number of casinos, Nevada doesn’t actually claim a spot among the five largest casinos in the United States by size. Instead, two are in Connecticut, two are in California, and Oklahoma takes the top spot.

Ranging from 270,000 to more than 600,000 square feet, these sprawling properties may not have the cachet of appearing in multiple Bond films like the Casino de Monte-Carlo, or boast the world’s largest rooftop infinity pool like Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. Nor do they offer safari parks like Sun City Casino Resort in South Africa. Still, you don’t have to leave the U.S. to find expansive casino destinations with plenty to offer. From championship golf courses and Native American cultural institutions to spas with aqua therapy and crystal energy healing, each property on this list offers its own appeal.

Of course, their size alone doesn’t automatically make them must-visit destinations, but it does mean plenty of gaming options, such as slot machines and roulette, as well as a wide variety of restaurants and entertainment to suit many different tastes. To identify America’s largest casinos, we began with data from Casino.org and verified details on each property’s official website. With gaming floors this large, getting your steps in likely won’t be a problem. So, pick your favorite, practice your poker face, and book your trip — and don’t forget your good luck charm!

Oklahoma: WinStar World Casino and Resort

Exterior of WinStar World Casino and Resort in Oklahoma

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The WinStar World Casino and Resort has certainly put Thackerville, Oklahoma (population 411) on the map. Covering an impressive 616,960 square feet – 400,000 square feet of it just on the gaming floor – WinStar is the world’s largest casino. With more than 55 poker tables and 10,000 electronic games to choose from, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to move around and find your lucky seat. The property has received 2.6 stars on Yelp, based on more than 1,000 reviews. A November 2025 visitor noted its world theme, explaining that “each section of the casino is designed as a different country or state.”

The resort has more than 20 restaurants and bars, and golfers will want to schedule a tee time at one of two 18-hole courses and perhaps get some tips on improving their game at the Golf Academy. When it’s time to relax, the pools and the spa beckon. Find your perfect spot at the three-tier Cascades pool or settle into a private cabana at the Terrace Pool. The spa offers standard massages, facials, and hair and nail services as well as hydrotherapy and aquathermal bathing.

WinStar is an hour from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas and about 2 hours from Oklahoma City. There are 1,700 rooms in the hotel on site, 100 rooms in the nearby inn accessible by shuttle, and 155 RV sites at the Fun Town RV Park at WinStar.

Connecticut: Mohegan Sun

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Despite being the third-smallest U.S. state, Connecticut is surprisingly home to two of the country’s largest casinos. America’s second-largest casino is Mohegan Sun, known for its dining and concert venue. It has more than 350,000 square feet of gaming space, 130,000 square feet of retail, and 375,000 square feet of meeting space. With two casinos, two hotel towers, two spas, two indoor pools, three live performance venues, and 45 restaurants and bars, it’s no wonder that more than 25,000 people walk through its doors every day. It’s also home to the Connecticut Sun, a WNBA franchise.

Because many casinos discourage or ban children, it’s noteworthy that Mohegan Sun not only has facilities and entertainment for them but also offers hourly childcare. Drop children ages two-and-a-half up to 12 years old at Kids Quest to play games, watch a movie, and sing karaoke under staff supervision while parents enjoy the adult casino amenities. There’s also a Cyber Quest arcade for older children.

Mohegan Sun’s architecture is also a standout feature. “All the touches of decor honoring Native history are incredible,” a guest wrote in a Google review, referencing murals and animatronic wolves that howl on the hour. Visitors should look out for design enhancements, such as a 55-foot indoor waterfall and a large indoor planetarium dome with varying celestial projections. Mohegan Sun receives 4.5 stars on Google from more than 44,000 reviews. It’s located in Uncasville, one hour from Bradley International Airport in Hartford, and about 2 hours from Boston.

Connecticut: Foxwoods

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Foxwoods Resort Casino is about 15 minutes from Mohegan Sun, making it possible — though a bit ambitious — to visit both in a single day. With 340,000 square feet of gaming space, Foxwoods offers about 3,400 slot machines, 54 poker tables, and 249 table games across five casino areas. It also includes four hotels, two spas, two golf courses, six nightclubs, as well as an escape room, a bowling alley, axe-throwing, and pottery workshops – so no one can claim boredom.

Located in the Native American history-rich town of Mashantucket, Foxwoods is also home to the 308,000-square-foot Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which explores the history of the Mashantucket Tribal Nation. The resort earns 4.3 stars on Google, based on more than 24,000 reviews. One guest in December 2025 wrote: “There is so much to see and do around every corner … Amazing restaurants for every taste and budget.”

Well placed in New England, Foxwoods is one hour from Bradley International Airport in Hartford, 1.5 hours from Boston, and only 20 minutes from the laid-back town of Mystic, one of the best small towns in the U.S. for a fall escape.

California: Yaamava’ Resort & Casino

Yaamava’ Resort & Casino, located in Highland, California, ranks fourth among the largest casinos in America with 7,500 slot machines and 150 table games covering 290,000 square feet of gaming space. It sits on the reservation of the Yuhaaviatam clan San Manuel Nation and is roughly an hour from Palm Springs International Airport and 2 hours from LAX.

In addition to having AAA Five-Diamond status, Yaamava’ has also been voted the best casino outside of Las Vegas. Guests can catch major headliners, take a dip in the third-floor Helix Pool, or unwind at Serrano Spa, which offers services like sound-therapy massages and gold-infused facials. Dining options include Pines Steakhouse, a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence recipient, and a USA Today Readers’ Choice winner for casino dining.

Despite its scale, the on-site hotel has only 432 rooms. The casino holds a 2.9-star rating on Tripadvisor from 603 reviews, with crowding frequently cited as a drawback. “Be prepared to wait for machines during peak hours,” a former guest noted in a January 2026 review. Another had a hard time getting in and out: “We were stuck in standstill traffic trying to enter the parking structure and stuck over one hour in parking structure trying to leave,” they wrote.

California: Thunder Valley Casino

Facade of Thunder Valley Casino at night

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Thunder Valley Casino Resort rounds out the top five largest casinos in America, with 270,000 square feet of gaming space. Located in Lincoln, Northern California, the resort has earned a AAA Four-Diamond designation annually since 2011. The property features 3,500 slot and video machines, 90 table games, a 4,500-seat entertainment venue, a seasonal outdoor pool with cabanas, and a 24-hour fitness center.

Take your pick of 20 restaurants and bars on-site, including the cleverly named High Steaks Steakhouse and Dos Coyotes Border Café for Mexican fare. If you don’t want to spend the time or money at a sit-down restaurant, grab a bite at fast-dining options on the property like Fatburger and Panda Express. The spa offers standard treatments like massages and facials alongside amenities such as a eucalyptus steam room, sauna, meditation room, and halotherapy. Operated by the United Auburn Indian Community, the resort includes a 408-room hotel.

Thunder Valley Casino Resort has a 4.5-star rating from 1,752 Tripadvisor reviews. “The new rooms are beautiful and … Love the latest expansions,” a guest wrote in January 2026. The property is about 30 minutes from Sacramento International Airport, 2 hours from Reno, Nevada, and a little over 2 hours from San Francisco.

Methodology

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To come up with the list of the largest casinos in America, we referenced casino square footage from the industry-leading independent gaming review and advice platform, Casino.org. We then verified the square footage for each of the five properties and incorporated information from their websites and external sources, such as Tripadvisor, Google Reviews, and Just Luxe.

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Nevada

2026 lunar eclipse visible in Nevada. How to watch

Published

8 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

2026 lunar eclipse visible in Nevada. How to watch

A lunar eclipse will be in Nevada skies late Monday night — or, more accurately, early Tuesday morning, March 3.

The downside is the hour: you’ll have to be up very late or very early, depending on your perspective.

Unlike a solar eclipse, which occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, a lunar eclipse happens when Earth casts its shadow on the moon, creating a rusty red hue.

If you’re looking to see the lunar eclipse, here’s everything you need to know about viewing it in Nevada.

What eclipse is in 2026?

If you live in the U.S., you will be able to see the lunar eclipse starting at 12:44 a.m. PST Tuesday, March 3, 2026, according to NASA. During the night, you’ll see the moon in a reddish hue, or a blood moon.

Totality lasts for a little more than an hour before the moon begins to emerge from behind Earth’s shadow, according to the popular site timeanddate.com. As the moon moves into Earth’s shadow, also known as the umbra, it appears red-orange or a “ghostly copper color,” hence its name: blood moon, NASA says.

“During a lunar eclipse, the moon appears red or orange because any sunlight that’s not blocked by our planet is filtered through a thick slice of Earth’s atmosphere on its way to the lunar surface,” NASA says. “It’s as if all the world’s sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the moon.”

Countdown clock to the 2026 total lunar eclipse

If you live in the U.S., you will be able to see the eclipse starting at 12:44 a.m. PST Tuesday, March 3, 2026.

The entire eclipse will last about six hours. People in Nevada can see the lunar eclipse during the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 3, 2026. The total lunar eclipse will be visible in North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia, Australia and Antarctica.

Everything will be over by 6:23 a.m. PST on March 3, 2026. Below is a countdown clock for the 2026 total lunar eclipse.

Where are the best places to see the lunar eclipse near Reno?

Though the Biggest Little City has an abundance of light pollution, darker skies are less than an hour from Reno.

Fort Churchill State Park: The park provides a dark night sky ideal for evening astronomical events among the ruins of Fort Churchill. Park entrance costs $5 for Nevada residents and $10 for nonresidents.
Pyramid Lake: A popular spot for Renoites seeking a night of stargazing, the lake is less than an hour from The Biggest Little City. It offers beautiful natural wonders and dark skies that give a clear view of the lunar eclipse.
Lake Tahoe: Multiple locations around the lake are excellent for stargazing that are less than an hour from Reno.
Cold Springs or Hidden Valley still get light pollution from the Biggest Little City, but have clearer skies than the middle of town.
Driving down the road on USA Parkway will likely also give you the dark skies to see the lunar eclipse without having to make a significant drive outside of town.

Carly Sauvageau with the Reno Gazette Journal contributed to this report.

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Nevada

How the strikes on Iran could impact gas prices in northern Nevada

Published

20 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

How the strikes on Iran could impact gas prices in northern Nevada

The United States and Israel launched targeted attacks on Iran on Saturday. The move brought new uncertainty into global energy markets, as northern Nevadans could be paying more at the pump in the coming weeks.

Following the strikes, oil prices increased. Brent crude, the international benchmark, jumped to roughly $73 a barrel, while the national benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, traded above $67.

Much of the concern centers around the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. which carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies.

Patrick de Haan, head of petroleum analysis with GasBuddy, a price tracking company, spoke on the current questions in the region.

“The known would reduce oil prices if there becomes clarity, but it’s the unknown that is stoking fears…. If there is some sort of clarity in the days ahead, whether from Iran, the United States, or Israel, on how long this would last. We’d be able to put potentially an end date for the potential impacts that we’re seeing,” said de Haan.

Experts say for every $5 to $10 increase in oil prices, drivers could pay 15 to 25 cents more per gallon.

According to Triple-A, the average price of a gallon of gas in Nevada on Sunday comes in at $3.70, which comes in above the national average of roughly $2.98.

Over at the Rainbow Market on Vassar Street, prices sat just below four dollars a gallon on Sunday. Reno resident Abran Reyes talked about gas prices potentially going up.

“Whether it’s to work, to maybe run errands, to do stuff that helps you, gas is essential…. That gas price really hits, especially in today’s economy, where gas prices are extraordinary…. I just hope everyone’s safe. I hope our soldiers and all of our troops can be okay,” said Reyes.

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Nevada debuts public option amid federal health care shifts

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Nevada debuts public option amid federal health care shifts

More than 10,000 people have enrolled in Nevada’s new public option health plans, which debuted last fall with the expectation that they would bring lower prices to the health insurance market.

Those preliminary numbers from the open enrollment period that ended in January are less than a third of what state officials had projected. Nevada is the third state so far to launch a public option plan, along with Colorado and Washington state. The idea is to offer lower-cost plans to consumers to expand health care access.

But researchers said plans like these are unlikely to fill the gaps left by sweeping federal changes, including the expiration of enhanced subsidies for plans bought on Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

The public option gained attention in the late 2000s when Congress considered but ultimately rejected creating a health plan funded and run by the government that would compete with private carriers in the market. The programs in Washington state, Colorado, and Nevada don’t go that far — they aren’t government-run but are private-public partnerships that compete with private insurance.

In recent years, states have considered creating public option plans to make health coverage more affordable and to reduce the number of uninsured people. Washington was the first state to launch a program, in 2021, and Colorado followed in 2023.

Washington and Colorado’s programs have run into challenges, including a lack of participation from clinicians, hospitals, and other care providers, as well as insurers’ inability to meet rate reduction benchmarks or lower premiums compared with other plans offered on the market.

Nevada law requires that the carriers of the public option plans — Battle Born State Plans, named after a state motto — lower premium costs compared with a benchmark “silver” plan in the marketplace by 15% over the next four years.

But that amount might not make much difference to consumers with rising premium payments from the loss of the ACA’s enhanced tax credits, said Keith Mueller, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute.

“That’s not a lot of money,” Mueller said.

Three of the eight insurers on the state’s exchange, Nevada Health Link, offered the state plans during the open enrollment period.

Insurance companies plan to meet the lower premium cost requirement in Nevada by cutting broker fees and commissions, which prompted opposition from insurance brokers in the state. In response, Nevada marketplace officials told state lawmakers in January that they will give a flat-fee reimbursement to brokers.

The public option has faced opposition among state leaders. In 2024, a state judge dismissed a lawsuit, brought by a Nevada state senator and a group that advocates for lower taxes, that challenged the public option law as unconstitutional. They have appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Federal Policy Impacts

Recent federal changes create more obstacles.

Nevada is consistently among the states with the largest populations of people who do not have health insurance coverage. Last year, nearly 95,000 people in the state received the enhanced ACA tax credits, averaging $465 in savings per month, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

But the enhanced tax credits expired at the end of the year, and it appears unlikely that lawmakers will bring them back. Nationwide ACA enrollment has decreased by more than 1 million people so far this year, down from record-high enrollment of 24 million last year.

About 4 million people are expected to lose health coverage from the expiration of the tax credits, according to the Congressional Budget Office. An additional 3 million are projected to lose coverage because of other policy changes affecting the marketplace.

Justin Giovannelli, an associate research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said the changes to the ACA in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, will make it more difficult for people to keep their coverage. These changes include more frequent enrollment paperwork to verify income and other personal information, a shortened enrollment window, and an end to automatic reenrollment.

In Nevada, the changes would amount to an estimated 100,000 people losing coverage, according to KFF.

“All of that makes getting coverage on Nevada Health Link harder and more expensive than it would be otherwise,” Giovannelli said.

State officials projected ahead of open enrollment that about 35,000 people would purchase the public option plans. Of the 104,000 people who had purchased a plan on the state marketplace as of mid-January, 10,762 had enrolled in one of the public option plans, according to Nevada Health Link.

Katie Charleson, communications officer for the state health exchange, said the original enrollment estimate was based on market conditions before the recent increases in customers’ premium costs. She said that the public option plans gave people facing higher costs more choices.

“We expect enrollment in Battle Born State Plans to grow over time as awareness increases and as Nevadans continue seeking quality coverage options that help reduce costs,” Charleson said.

According to KFF, nationally the enhanced subsidies saved enrollees an average of $705 annually in 2024, and enrollees would save an estimated $1,016 in premium payments on average in 2026 if the subsidies were still in place. Without the subsidies, people enrolled in the ACA marketplace could be seeing their premium costs more than double.

Insights From Washington and Colorado

Washington and Colorado are not planning to alter their programs due to the expiration of the tax credits, according to government officials in those states.

Other states that had recently considered creating public options have backtracked. Minnesota officials put off approving a public option in 2024, citing funding concerns. Proposals to create public options in Maine and New Mexico also sputtered.

Washington initially saw meager enrollment in its Cascade Select public option plans; only 1% of state marketplace enrollees chose a public option plan in 2021. But that changed after lawmakers required hospitals to contract with at least one public option plan by 2023. Last year the state reported that 94,000 customers enrolled, accounting for 30% of all customers on the state marketplace. The public option plans were the lowest-premium silver plans in 31 of Washington’s 39 counties in 2024.

A 2025 study found that since Colorado implemented its public option, called the Colorado Option, coverage through the ACA marketplace has become more affordable for enrollees who received subsidies but more expensive for enrollees who did not.

Colorado requires all insurers offering coverage through its marketplace to include a public option that follows state guidelines. The state set premium reduction targets of 5% a year for three years beginning in 2023. Starting this year, premium costs are not allowed to outpace medical inflation.

Though the insurers offering the public option did not meet the premium reduction targets, enrollment in the Colorado Option has increased every year it has been available. Last year, the state saw record enrollment in its marketplace, with 47% of customers purchasing a public option plan.

Giovannelli said states are continuing to try to make health insurance more affordable and accessible, even if federal changes reduce the impact of those efforts.

“States are reacting and trying to continue to do right by their residents,” Giovannelli said, “but you can’t plug all those gaps.”

Are you struggling to afford your health insurance? Have you decided to forgo coverage? Click here to contact KFF Health News and share your story.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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