When Foxwoods Resort Casino opened in 1992, the legal gambling environment looked much different than it does today. Las Vegas and Atlantic City had widespread gaming mega-casinos while a few other select locations in the United States, including select Native American reservations, had more modest casinos.

Opening a Las Vegas-style resort in rural Connecticut — not really near anything, but easy enough to get to for people in New England and New York — seemed like a bold, but very risky idea. And when it launched, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which owns and operates the casino resort, could not possibly have imagined how grand it would become.