Casinos on Land vs on Water: What Are the Legalities?

For anyone who’s seen the classic gambling film Maverick or loves hearing about the history of gambling, the strange ongoing tradition of riverboat casinos and the constant throwbacks to their 1800s style that can be found in many land-based casinos can be both intriguing and perplexing.

After all, once you realize that a number of states allow gambling only on riverboat casinos (which usually means a craft that’s literally on the river), you start to ask the obvious question: “Can casinos be on land at all? Or do they have to exist solely on water?”

Now, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to limit my discussion to casinos in the United States. The short answer to this question is yes, casinos in many states can be on land.

That being said, some states actually do require casinos to be built over water. Why that is and what that looks like requires a bit of history. Keep reading below to find out more.

Riverboat Gambling Used to Be Extremely Popular

Attitudes toward gambling, much like public attitudes toward just about anything you can think of, have shifted over the years. It was once the case that gambling was heavily, and I do mean heavily, frowned upon in the United States. But it was also the case that people really didn’t think much of it for a while.





The “we don’t think much of it” period basically runs from the original colonies in the 1600s to about the end of the 1800s. So, for about 300 years (give or take), gambling was pretty much just like any other profession. Some people seemed to dislike it, but it was generally legal.

Before the railroad came along, the main method of transportation for cargo in most of the developed world was via boat. In fact, there’s a large period of American history where canals were being built left and right in order to make shipping easier. It was literally easier to dig a giant canal then pay for boats to float on it than it was to ship goods on a wagon.

Obviously, that means that rivers were in high demand. This is why you find so many older American cities near a river (among many other reasons, like having drinking water close by). So, there’s this interesting period where gambling is essentially legal everywhere, and lots of people are traveling by boat.

There are a few more reasons you saw boat travel as the most popular method of travel. For one thing, it was safer. But with that being said, boat travel is pretty boring. If you’ve ever taken a long cruise, you understand why they have so many activities on board. There’s a whole lot of nothing to do most of the time.

And just like modern cruise ships, these big passenger boats decided they needed activities that were profitable to pass the time. What better way to turn a profit than to offer games of chance?

Now, there’s another side to this coin that I haven’t mentioned yet. There were, in fact, local regulations against gambling during this time, even when there weren’t federal regulations. So, while gambling might be legal in a state, you might still get in a lot of trouble…

Unless you were gambling on water.

Gambling Politics

As part of the weirdness of politics at the time, many areas in the United States would only outlaw gambling on dry land, and some people could get pretty violent about enforcing this kind of stuff. So, if you wanted to keep your money (and your head), you usually tried to just gamble on riverboats (if you were a professional gambler, that is).

All this pretty much came to a halt when some state by state, gambling became illegal. By about 1910, gambling was basically illegal everywhere. This is no surprise as this is around the Prohibition era, where some hard-nosed religious folk decided that everyone should suffer if they had to.

To the surprise of no one but those same religious folk, the prohibition didn’t last, and by the 1930s, gambling started to creep back into the national conversation. Nevada made it legal outright, which led to the creation of Las Vegas, and the rest of the states began to legalize smaller stuff like horse racing or lotteries over the following decades.

Still, it wouldn’t be until the ‘90s that actual riverboat casinos once again became a part of the national consciousness and were legalized.

Riverboat Gambling Made Legal in the Early ‘90s

Now, this is where things get weird.

As is often the case when it comes to the law, someone made a law that had a particular purpose, and someone else ended up getting around that law by observing the unforeseen consequences of the law.

In the 1950s, a federal law called The Johnson Act made it illegal to transport gambling devices across state borders. On top of that, many of the laws about gambling being illegal on dry land were still around in certain areas.

No one thought much of The Johnson Act for a while after that, until someone got smart and figured out that they could gamble on the river just fine. There was some controversy, but the result was that a number of states passed laws that legalized gambling on rivers, and thus, modern riverboat gambling was born.

Now, they didn’t exactly get a complete pass. There are still quite a few regulations on these vessels. Some of them concern the size or capacity of the vessel. Others concern how the vessel operates, what kind of games can be played on them, how much you can bet and how much you can lose, and even requirements on how the boat is constructed. For instance, in Louisiana, the boats have to be paddlewheel driven—if that’s not just plain silly, I don’t know what is!

So, now, we get to the modern era where many riverboat casinos are legal in several different states. But does that mean that all casinos must be on the river?

Land-Based Casinos Are Legal in a Number of States

While riverboat casinos can be found in many different states, all you have to do is look at Las Vegas to realize that land-based casinos very much exist. Yes, casinos can be on land in the United States, but again, there are certain restrictions.





How those restrictions work varies on a state-by-state basis. In some states, the only truly legal land-based casinos are owned by Native American tribes and are on tribal land. This is an important distinction that I think requires a little explanation.

You see, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were some landmark legal cases brought on by a number of Native American tribes against the federal government. Their basic goal was to legalize gambling on tribal land, and their argument was pretty sound because they are considered sovereign (essentially, they’re like a separate state, and though they need to obey federal law, they don’t have to respect state law), they can have casinos on their land.

The courts agreed to this, and Native American tribes were allowed to open land-based casinos. While land-based casinos had already existed in Nevada for decades at this point, now you had a number of land-based casinos opening in states where gambling was otherwise illegal.

Over time, some states did make land-based casinos legal, but many still outlaw them. Another issue to keep in mind is the cost of owning and operating a casino. Many of them have simply gone out of business because they weren’t profitable, which can lead to the closing of some land-based casinos.

Americans Love Riverboat Casinos

Even though there are plenty of casinos on land all over the United States, there’s a large portion of the population that loves riverboat casinos because of their connection to history.

Riverboat casinos are very much associated with the Wild West. There are more than a few movies, books, and even video games where characters find themselves on a riverboat casino and spend time gambling. Some of the greatest American books ever written also pay homage to the role that the riverboat played in that time in America.

It’s one of the reasons that you’ll still find land-based casinos in America today that have a riverboat theme. Even a lot of online casinos like to have a riverboat/Wild West theme. People love to dress up in the old-style clothing of the era and pretend they’re living on the frontier. It’s a part of the American imagination that will likely linger for centuries.

Conclusion

Though there are many land-based casinos in the United States, you’ll find that riverboat casinos still exist and will likely be around a long time. Is there a particular riverboat casino you think I should have mentioned in this article? Let me know in the comments.