- The United Auburn Indian Community named general manager Dawn Clayton chief executive of Thunder Valley Casino Resort on Aug. 4.
- Clayton has spent 16 of her 44 years in gaming and hospitality at Thunder Valley, the past 13 running operations.
- The tribe’s compact caps the property at 3,500 gaming devices and two facilities through Dec. 31, 2041.
- Interior on July 31 revoked the Vallejo gaming eligibility that United Auburn and three other tribes had sued to overturn.
LINCOLN, Calif. – The United Auburn Indian Community named Dawn Clayton chief executive officer of Thunder Valley Casino Resort on Aug. 4, promoting the general manager who has run the Placer County property’s daily operations for the past 13 years.
Clayton Moves Up After 16 Years At The Property
Clayton has spent 16 years at Thunder Valley and the past 13 overseeing the resort’s day-to-day operations, the tribe said in announcing the promotion. Her 44 years in gaming, hospitality and entertainment have covered commercial casinos, racinos, riverboat gaming and tribal gaming.
Thunder Valley opened June 9, 2003. Clayton arrived seven years later and has since led the hotel expansion, overseen the development and opening of The Venue, and kept the property operating through the COVID-19 pandemic. The tribe describes the resort as one of Placer County’s largest employers.
“She leads with humility, decisiveness and an unwavering commitment to excellence,” said John L. Williams, chairman of the United Auburn Indian Community.
“I am deeply honored by the confidence the United Auburn Indian Community has placed in me,” Clayton said. “Everything Thunder Valley has accomplished has been made possible by the tribe’s vision and leadership.”
The announcement did not name a predecessor.
What The Compact Caps And What It Requires
Clayton takes over a gaming floor whose size is fixed by contract, the arrangement every tribal operator works under in gambling in California. Section 4.1(a) of the tribe’s amended and restated tribal-state gaming compact authorizes “Gaming Devices, up to a maximum of thirty-five hundred (3500).” Section 4.2 permits the tribe to “establish and operate not more than two (2) Gaming Facilities,” and Thunder Valley is the only one it runs.
Section 11.2.1 keeps the agreement in force until Dec. 31, 2041. The U.S. Department of the Interior deemed the compact approved on Dec. 23, 2015. It restated a 1999 compact and a 2004 amendment that, in the document’s words, “significantly increased the Gaming Operation’s earning potential and revenue payments to the State.”
The same document sets what the tribe pays. It owes California a pro rata share of the state’s regulatory costs plus $1.6 million a year to the Special Distribution Fund, and its total payments to that fund are capped at $3 million.
With the device count fixed, the projects Clayton has run at the property have been non-gaming ones: the hotel, The Venue, and the dining and entertainment build-out that separates it from smaller land-based casinos in the state.
The Tribe’s Other Front Is In Federal Court
United Auburn is one of four tribes that took Interior’s Jan. 10, 2025 finding to federal court, alongside Lytton Rancheria and the Wintun tribes Kletsel Dehe and Yocha Dehe. That finding held that a 160.33-acre parcel in Vallejo, southwest of Lincoln, qualified for gaming as restored lands.
Interior reversed that finding July 31, revoking the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ gaming eligibility at the parcel and prompting the band to suspend play at the hall it had opened a week earlier, the latest turn in Scotts Valley’s Vallejo bid. The band has said it will challenge the determination in federal court, a filing that would reopen the case during Clayton’s first weeks in the job.