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.

Tunica mississippi casino