Still, most everyone agrees there are still more opportunities than before the casinos came, when there were no paved roads, limited water and sewage lines, and few jobs outside agriculture. On a good weekend, Keisha Jackson, 36, used to make roughly $600 in tips. After two hours behind closed doors, no decision was reached.Īt the Hollywood Café, a local blues club that used to pack in tourists and locals with catfish, hush puppies and fried dill pickles, servers are feeling the pinch. He huddled in the fire station’s TV room last week as officials held a meeting about the future of the department. “This county is tumbling slowly,” said Kevin Drake, 32, a firefighter with the North Tunica County Fire Department. Firefighters worry county officials may switch to a volunteer fire system or cut the number of full-time firefighters by half.

With a steep drop in tax revenue from North Mississippi casinos - from about $1.66 billion at its peak in 2006 to $885 million in 2017 - the county administrator is slashing budgets, no longer refilling positions when employees leave and cutting “non-essential” services at local blues and history museums and the county’s 6,000-seat Arena and Expo Center. An outlet mall that once housed national chains, from Nautica to Old Navy, now offers a flea market, a pawn shop and a string of discount stores with penny-pinching names such as “Super Bargain” and “Cheap Charlie’s.” Along the four-lane highway next to the abandoned complex, a Valero gas station and Sonic Drive-In also are shuttered. “I’m done with casinos.”Ī few miles east, weeds sprout across the sprawling 2,200-acre Harrah’s complex that once housed a massive casino, convention center, three hotels, an 18-hole golf course and an RV park. He shrugged when asked what he would do next. “There’s no future in casinos,” Dondrell McKay, a 30-year-old security guard, said as he stood at a Roadhouse entrance, monitoring an empty hallway. Amid a whir of giddy beeps and chimes, just a smattering of players tap buttons and pull levers on penny slots and video poker machines. Most nights the kitchen behind the bar is closed. Inside the Roadhouse, a Western saloon-themed casino improbably positioned within a faux Bavarian castle with a moat, the blackjack and poker tables are dim and without dealers. And across Tunica, there are signs of decline.

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