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Iowa Remembers Riverboat Casino Debut, 20 Years ago

Posted on April 5th, 2011

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It’s hard to fathom when history hits another milestone, but Iowa’s acceptance of Riverboat along the Mississippi has just hit that mark. For the twentieth time in twenty years, Iowa is playing host to Riverboat Casinos, a stirring reminder of the early roots of gambling in the state. Since then, Iowa has come a really long way and it couldn’t continue moving on without continuing to look back at a past that paved the future. April 1 marks that memorable day when The Casino Belle, the very first gambling boat on the Mississippi River, makes its way back to Dubuque, Iowa. In those twenty-some visits, an annual escapade that has many Iowans pumped up and excited, the tri-state area has grown from a meager gambling destination to a thriving gambling economy. It has made the evolution from sea to land, now hosting a casino and entertainment destination at the Port of Dubuque.

And it doesn’t just end there; a few miles down the road is the Mystique Casino, newly renovated and ready for another round of fun and games. That together with the Dubuque Greyhound Park constitutes one of the more dense collections of gaming facilities in a city not named Las Vegas or Atlantic City. Here in Dubuque, the arrival of The Belle is a festive time for local folks. In fact, people don’t just wait for the boat to come – they actually go down to Florida to ride with the boat as it goes up through the Mississippi. On that occasion twenty-years ago, some 40 to 50 people were on that chartered bus that found its way to Pensacola, Florida. It was March 1991; gambling was barely a fixture in the state.

“We worked around the clock; everybody was doing whatever it took to load furniture, load gaming tokens, load provisions for the trip up river,” said Nelson Klavitter, one of those forty-some people, referring to what they saw when they arrived in Pensacola. Instead of a beautiful, stylish boat saddled up and ready for the Mississippi trek, they found out that the boat was still missing the necessary supplies; even a power module was lying on the dock as if it wasn’t supposed to go with them on that trip. It took time but after a day and a half of delays, The Belle finally set ashore on a fateful Sunday morning. It was supposed to leave Friday.

Those forty to fifty-some people found the trip less a cruise and more a short crash course in fending for yourself; there was not much comfort to go around, sleeping bags for crewmembers was a luxury not everyone can afford, and the ovens weren’t connected so everyone had to be content with cereals and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. People had to take a bath in restroom sinks as there were still no showers. The ordeal lasted for a few days. It wasn’t as glamorous as people intended it to be. “By the end of the trip, we were all smelling pretty good,” Klavitter said with a spoonful of sarcasm. Still, he remembers those days as good times. Before long, the meager conditions bonded the crew together tighter than what one would have expected. The work to prepare the boat for a grand arrival kept them busy and that was all that they needed to stay close together.

Supply boats which loaded The Belle as it made its way through the River eventually got the word out that the riverboat casino was on its way to Dubuque. Pretty soon, the crowd along the river banks swelled in anticipation of the boat’s passing, and docking. The moment The Belle found its way to Dubuque Ice Harbor, the crowd was in the thousands. “It was bittersweet. It was the end of the trip and we were proud of what we were able to do,” recalled Klavitter, who said the crew quietly slipped out the kitchen back door to make way for the ticket holders who were coming in for the inaugural cruise. Klavitter added, “Dubuque can be very proud of being pioneers and having people in the city who had the vision and were willing to take a gamble, so to speak, but to do it in a way that was really classy.”