History
When first approved, these casinos were required to actually be located on ships that could sail away from the dock. In some areas, gambling was only allowed when the ship was sailing. Over time, these regulations allowed gambling when the ship was docked.
In some states, such as Indiana, the boats are no longer required to leave dock or even have a captain and crew on board while the casino is open.
Further changes allowed these casinos to be located in a moat or an area with water adjacent to a navigable waterway, leading them to be referred to as "boats in moats." Over time, these casinos were allowed to be built on stilts but still had to be over water.
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 several states are now allowing these casinos to be built on land within certain limits from a navigable waterway. Most of Mississippi's Gulf Coast riverboat casinos were destroyed or suffered severe damage from the storm, although most have been rebuilt.
Read more about this topic: Riverboat Casino
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“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)