First look: Inside California's new $600-million casino that's bigger than Caesars Palace

Next clip you’re driving the Grapevine and nearing the wood of lipid rigs connected the outskirts of Bakersfield, look for a six-story guitar.

That would beryllium the Hard Rock Casino Tejon, whose opening connected Thursday brings industrial-strength Indian gaming — and immoderate Hollywood pizzazz — to a territory amended known for cowboy hats, farmland and petroleum extraction.

The Tejon casino stands successful the agrarian assemblage of Mettler, adjacent the convergence of Interstate 5 and State Route 99 — “a stone’s propulsion away” from Los Angeles, suggested Hard Rock Casino Tejon President Chris Kelley.

In effect, the casino is simply a $600-million stake by leaders of Hard Rock International and the Tejon Indian Tribe that they tin drawback a cardinal relation among the galore Indian casinos successful Southern California.

The spot is the archetypal full-scale gaming and amusement destination successful Kern County.

(Makenzie Beeney Photography for Hard Rock International)

A upwind sculpture astatine the entranceway of the casino.

(Cristian Costea for Hard Rock International)

The draw? Most notably, 150,000 quadrate feet of gaming abstraction — including 58 array games and much than 2,000 slot machines — putting it among the largest casinos successful Southern California, connected par with galore on the Strip successful Las Vegas.

And, of course, due to the fact that this is simply a Hard Rock venture, determination are popular euphony artifacts connected display. Among them: the bluish hooded velvet mini formal Sabrina Carpenter wore successful her “Please Please Please” euphony video, signed guitars from Sheryl Crow and Bonnie Raitt, Beck’s tambourine and Natalie Cole’s orangish precocious heels.

The casino besides includes 4 restaurants serving Asian thoroughfare food, tacos, pizza and American comfortableness nutrient (especially Nashville blistery chicken) — and a bonus feature. At prime hours, Kelley said, unit volition enactment up a divider to make Deep Cut, a fancier “speakeasy restaurant” that volition stress steak and seafood.

“This is thing nary different Hard Rock Cafe has ... a edifice wrong a restaurant,” said Kelley, starring a circuit successful the days earlier opening.

Live-action array games see blackjack, craps, roulette and baccarat.

(Makenzie Beeney Photography for Hard Rock International)

Plans for the 2nd signifier of the task volition see a 400-room edifice and spa on-site, on with a 2,800-seat Hard Rock Live venue designed to big concerts, sporting events and yet marque Kern County a premier destination for travelers and fans. Officials declined to stock a timeline for this adjacent installment.

Though its planetary empire began with a London cafe successful 1971, Hard Rock International has been owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida since 2007. The company’s autochthonal ownership was “a large influence” connected the Tejon tribe’s determination to squad up, said Tejon Tribal Chairman Octavio Escobedo III. Hard Rock Casino Tejon is owned by the Tejon Indian Tribe and is managed by Hard Rock International.

For the Tejon people and its 1,523 enrolled members, the casino amounts to a caller section successful a saga afloat of challenges. In the 1850s, the Tejon were included successful the instauration of California’s archetypal Indian preservation — which was past closed by national officials successful the 1860s. More than a period later, successful 1979, the people was omitted from a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs database of formally recognized tribes — an evident mistake that took decades to correct.

When the Tejon did triumph national designation successful precocious 2011, gaming plans materialized quickly. By precocious 2016, the people had acceptable successful question the acquisition of the casino site.

The edifice Deep Cut is billed arsenic an “elevated steakhouse experience.”

(Makenzie Beeney Photography for Hard Rock International)

For the tribe, Escobedo said, the semipermanent representation apt includes processing a residential assemblage — which the Tejon haven’t had for much than a period — arsenic the people aims for “financial sovereignty.” Though helium declined to specify the magnitude of wealth that would require, helium did accidental “it’s going to instrumentality a tremendous magnitude of fiscal subject to execute that.”

So far, things consciousness promising. Escobedo said 52 tribal members person signed connected to enactment astatine casino jobs and “I’d emotion to spot that fig treble implicit the adjacent twelvemonth oregon so.”

Long earlier the Seminoles bought power of Hard Rock International, the people pioneered Indian gaming successful the U.S., opening with a bingo hallway successful Hollywood, Fla., successful 1979. Through further concern and ineligible victories rooted successful tribal sovereignty, tribes successful 29 states crossed the U.S. person built hundreds of gaming operations, which unneurotic gross much than $40 cardinal yearly.

Beyond its possibilities for the Tejon tribe, the accomplishment of the casino means astir 1,100 caller jobs for greater Bakersfield, which mislaid a beloved amusement venue successful August erstwhile Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace closed aft 29 years.

Owens, who died successful 2006, was a longtime nonmigratory of Bakersfield and proponent of the gritty “Bakersfield sound” successful state music. Besides artifacts from popular music, stone ’n’ rotation and Tejon taste history, Kelley said, “We are going to person immoderate Buck Owens memorabilia. It conscionable wouldn’t beryllium close not to.”