About Milwaukee's Potawatomi Casino

In the 1980s, many members of the Forest County Potawatomi tribe lived in poverty.

Today, members of the tribe receive tens of thousands of dollars in dividends.

What happened?

The Potawatomi Casino in the Menomonee River Valley happened.

When it first opened around 1990 at 1720 W. Canal St., the facility was a large bingo hall with a few hundred slot machines of questionable legality and little outside regulation.

The tribe’s reservation is in northern Wisconsin, making the Milwaukee casino the nation’s first off-reservation tribal casino. The land where the casino is located is believed to have once been a Potawatomi village, according to a Milwaukee Public Museum history of the tribe.

In its initial years, the tribe shared its gaming revenue with the Indian Community School and a non-Indian management company. Those deals have since expired.

Today, the casino is a major Milwaukee tourist attraction and an unmissable part of the city’s skyline. It rakes in more than $400 million in gambling winnings a year. A chunk of those winnings goes to members of the tribe in the form of per-capita payments estimated to be more than $70,000 per member.

The gambling hall draws nearly 6 million visitors a year and the 784,000-square-foot casino offers a range of ways to win or lose money, including about 3,000 slot machines, sports book, craps and a variety of table games including poker and blackjack.

And since 1999, The Forest County Potawatomi Foundation has donated about $75 million to Milwaukee-area nonprofits, according to a spokesperson for the tribe.