Inside the casino it's all new and shiny with a 2000-seat event center, and lots of slot machines (1750 of them) plus 20 gaming tables. A couple of little shuttles were driving around to help people get to the front door from the far reaches of the parking lot, but we made it on our own. Once there we tried to take advantage of valet parking, but no one was on duty (it might be different on the weekends, I don't know) so we parked in the large, sprawling lot. The new casino itself is a beautifully crafted building in a picturesque setting, and in truth is much closer and easier to find (if you have an address and can follow a map or directions.or a couple of locals) than when it was at the end of a twisty mountain road on the other side of Porterville. Many thanks to those guys as they proceeded to make it easy to find the casino which, by the way, turned out to be a couple of miles off the 65 (not what I'd call 'right off' the highway). The station clerk was very helpful, but even more so were a couple of locals, young men who said they were going that way and we could follow them. However, there was a Shell station right where I exited so I instead opted to go 'old-school' and ask for directions. On one of our passes back and forth I decided to get off the freeway and check Google Maps and see where we were going wrong. We drove all the way through Porterville without seeing anything that looked like a casino. We couldn't see any signs pointing us to the fairgrounds either. But there was no sign that we could see that would tell us which exit to take. I figured that the place must therefore be easy to find in fact, I sort of assumed that we would be able to spot it from the 65, so I didn't bother to look up directions to get us there.Īs we got closer to Porterville, we did see several billboards for Eagle Mountain Casino, and one showed an address: 1850 West Avenue. Oddly enough, the numerous television commercials for the new casino never mention an address, they just say the new casino is 'right off highway 65,' by the fairgrounds in Porterville. Just north of Bakersfield we turned off the 99 onto Highway 65, which would take us all the way to Porterville. We treated ourselves to breakfast at the Keene Café, then set out on the 58 to Bakersfield, then caught the 99 north. A couple of days after that my slot-machine loving friend Willie Ray and I decided to go to Porterville to check it out. Perhaps you've seen the commercials on TV about the newly built (and in a new location) Eagle Mountain Casino in Porterville – as advertised, the casino, run by the Tule River Tribe, had its Grand Opening on May 9.

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