River Towns Take a Risky Gamble

Mark Twain and Charlie Chaplin look-alikes, trailed by a freckle-faced Huck Finn, greet passengers as they come up the gangplank of the Mississippi River's newest paddle-wheeler, Emerald Lady. A Dixieland band lays down tune after tune, while a jokester on stilts tosses colorful doubloons. Waitresses with feathers jutting from their hair sashay through wood-paneled rooms, offering cocktails. As the riverboat pulls out of Fort Madison, Iowa, and steams up and down the Mississippi on a three-hour excursion into the 19th century, it is easy to get swept up in the hoopla. So easy that one can almost forget what this anachronistic cruise is really about: money and risk.

With the launch of the Emerald Lady last month, Fort Madison became the fourth of Iowa's Mississippi River towns to take a chance on riverboat gambling as a lure for tourism and a cure for economic woes. The others launched floating casinos on April Fools' Day. Now all are praying the joke won't be on them. Iowa's notion of melding nostalgic river travel with America's gambling addiction is already stoking competition up and down the river. Among the potential ventures:

-- Illinois has approved 10 riverboat gambling licenses, good for two vessels each. The first boat could cruise from Alton this summer. Unlike Iowa, where passengers are limited by law to $200 in losses per cruise, those in Illinois will be able to place unlimited bets.

-- Mississippi has also approved unlimited betting on the water but has yet to issue any operating licenses.

-- Missouri will put riverboat gambling to a state vote. As proposed, passengers would have a $500 cap on their daily losses.

-- Louisiana's legislature is considering a bill that would authorize up to 15 paddle-wheel gambling boats. Governor Buddy Roemer supports the idea.

-- Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are also considering variations on the same risky business for their rivers.

Why are so many states willing to wager on something as chancy as novelty gambling? In a word: desperation. Towns on the northern reaches of the Mississippi were battered hard in the Rust Belt shake-out of the early '80s, and the oil bust has left Louisiana's coffers depleted. Hit again by the current recession, local governments are eager for any kind of development that will attract tourists and restore sagging tax rolls. Legislators are keenly aware that gambling is among the country's fastest-growing industries -- expected to be worth $278 billion this year alone -- and they want a piece of that action.

& The romantic aura of the mighty Mississippi provides additional appeal. By harking back to the time of frock-coated dandies and hoopskirted belles, the modern riverboats evoke memories of an era at once more daring and less threatening. "A riverboat is nostalgia, Americana," says John Connelly, owner of the gaudy President, a 297-ft. five-decker that docks in Davenport, Iowa. "A gambling casino is something completely different."