When legislators authorized 'wide open' commercial gambling there in 1931, the state was in the throes of the Great Depression. In the United States, public gambling at cards and dice was legal intermittently during the nineteenth century in several states, including Louisiana, California, and Nevada, but by 1910 this kind of gambling-and playing at slot machines - had been outlawed everywhere in the United States. By 1827, however, casino-style gambling had been banned in all European countries save the tiny Mediterranean enclave of Monaco, whose Monte Carlo would grow wealthy on a decades-long monopoly.

Though that casino was closed in 1774, other European states - mostly small, resource-poor Jurisdiction - also permitted gambling, usually, as part of a larger spa complex spas were Europe's first true tourist destination, and gambling was considered an essential part of many European spa communities. Legal public gambling in casinos date back to 1638, when the Grand Council of Venice awarded a franchise for a single legal casino in that city. Gambling developed in nearly every ancient civilization of consequences and has been part of Western life since the days of Ancient Greece. Gambling is among the oldest of human behaviors archaeological evidence of gambling stretches back into prehistory, and purpose-built dice have been discovered at sites dating back to 7,000 years before the present.