Only one commissioner, Ron Fabrizius, voted against the license approval. The move stripped the state’s Indian tribes of their decade-long monopoly over the industry. Wyoming in recent years has legalized multiple types of gaming. One of the tribe’s members pleaded with the commission not to approve the license, saying it would exacerbate the high crime rate already plaguing some of the nearby neighborhoods.Įlected officials of the tribe’s executive government branch the Northern Arapaho Business Council, conversely, said alcohol sales are important to helping the casino survive in an increasingly competitive gambling market. The Wind River Hotel and Casino, on the edge of the Wind River Indian Reservation abutting the town of Riverton, now can sell tap or packaged liquor.īut leaders of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, which owns the casino, promised at a Tuesday meeting of the Fremont County Commission that the casino would not sell packaged liquor, except to people staying in the hotel. Fremont County’s government granted a liquor license Tuesday to a business on the Wind River Indian Reservation - a rare concession in a region where alcohol sales have been disallowed historically and no liquor licenses have been issued for at least three decades.
