What is We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort?
Drive east on Shea until it ends at the Beeline Highway, turn north, and within two miles you’re on the land of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, a sovereign nation of about 950 citizens on the Verde River. We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort is its hotel and casino. It is not in Scottsdale, and it is not in Fountain Hills, though it sits just past both.
The hotel came first. It opened at the end of 2005 as the Radisson Fort McDowell Resort, 246 rooms around two heated pools, with the Nation’s We-Ko-Pa Golf Club next door. In 2014 the Nation dropped the chain flag and renamed the place We-Ko-Pa, the Yavapai name for Four Peaks, the mountain that fills the eastern sky here. In October 2020 it opened a new casino connected to the hotel, replacing the Fort McDowell Casino that had begun as a bingo hall in 1984. The whole complex is smoke-free.
So who is it for? Golfers, mainly: the two courses next door are among the best in Arizona. It also suits people who want the desert without a city in it — the view from most of the property is the open Verde country and Four Peaks rather than rooftops. Casino guests have a modern, smoke-free floor. If you want to walk to dinner in Old Town or have a pool-party weekend, stay at an Old Town hotel instead. Even so, a night or two out here goes well with a Scottsdale trip.
How to do We-Ko-Pa right
Build the stay around tee times. We-Ko-Pa Golf Club has two courses: Cholla, by Scott Miller (2001), and Saguaro, by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (2006). Neither has a single house beside the fairways. Saguaro is the one that shows up on national rankings, and its tee times go first. Lock the golf in first and book the room around it.
Look at the building on your way through. The Nation designed the 2020 casino around its own story. The big blue circle in the atrium floor represents Montezuma’s Well, which the Yavapai know as their place of origin. A blue terrazzo path traces the Verde River, the columns carry basketry patterns, and the ceiling copies a desert tortoise shell. It takes two minutes to notice and it changes how the place reads.
Eat on site, mostly. Ember is the steak-and-seafood dinner room, cooked over a wood fire. Ahnala handles breakfast and casual meals and has a Starbucks counter, and there’s a buffet and a sports-and-entertainment venue. Fountain Hills’ patios are ten minutes away if you want a change, and the Shea corridor restaurants, like Course, are about 20.
Get off the property once. The Nation’s Fort McDowell Adventures runs horseback rides across the mesquite bosque and through the Verde River (see our riding guide). McDowell Mountain Regional Park is a short drive north for hiking and riding.
Respect where you are. Beyond the resort, the river bottom is people’s homes, not a park. Stay on public roads and at the businesses, and leave the rest alone.
A river that stayed a river
The land under the hotel has a hard history. The Army founded Camp McDowell on the Verde in 1865 to fight the Yavapai and Apache. In 1875 the Yavapai were marched to San Carlos. When families came back to the old post lands, Theodore Roosevelt’s executive order of September 15, 1903 set aside about 24,680 acres for them, and the Yavapai doctor Carlos Montezuma spent his last years fighting to keep them there. The Fort McDowell page and the Yavapai page tell that history in full.
The fight that defined the modern Nation was over water. Orme Dam was planned for the Salt–Verde confluence as part of the Central Arizona Project, and its reservoir would have drowned more than half the reservation. In 1976 members voted 144 to 57 against selling, and on November 12, 1981 the Interior Secretary cancelled the dam. The Nation celebrates that with Orme Dam Victory Days every November. The undeveloped desert you see from the golf courses survives because of that vote.
Gaming came next. The Nation opened a bingo hall in 1984 and later added slot machines. On May 12, 1992, federal agents raided the casino and loaded 349 machines into moving vans. Tribal members blocked the only road out with cars, gravel trucks and earth-movers. The three-week standoff pushed Governor Fife Symington into signing Arizona’s first tribal gaming compacts that November — the same framework that later built the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s Talking Stick Resort on Scottsdale’s other edge.
The casino paid for everything that followed. The golf club opened in 2001 and the Radisson in 2005. In 2014 the Nation took the hotel independent. Tribal Council President Ruben Balderas said at the time that the name resonates deeply because “these peaks have been spiritually part of us since time immemorial.” Then in 2020 a new casino replaced the old one. Today the resort is one of several Nation enterprises, along with the golf club, Fort McDowell Adventures, the Eagle View RV Resort, Fort McDowell Farm and Yavapai Materials.
For a visitor from Scottsdale, the lesson is simple. Both Scottsdale and Fountain Hills sell desert views. This one is owned by the people who kept the river from being dammed, and the desert you see from your room is still there because they did.