When Emerald Queen Casino Was a Riverboat Venue

Driving along Interstate 5 through Tacoma, the hulking half sphere of the Tacoma Dome is no longer the only notable sight. In 2020, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians’ Emerald Queen Casino went live with its impressive big screen and LED accent lights, pulling the eyes of drivers cruising along that stretch of highway.

Inside, the casino is state-of-the-art and features the top gaming technology, including Sportsbook betting. But for many local gambling enthusiasts, the memory of Emerald Queen’s early days still lingers in their minds.

It was, after all, only 30 years ago this December that the Puyallup Tribe brought Las Vegas-style gambling and entertainment to Tacoma for the first time by opening its shoreside venue in the tideflats area.

The waterfront building was built to mimic 19th-century New Orleans architecture. “Inside, brass ceiling tiles, crystal chandeliers, and balconies with wrought-iron railings are meant to evoke Bourbon Street,” according to The News Tribune’s day-after-Christmas dispatch ahead of the venue’s late-December 1996 opening.

The Big Easy-Esque building was later augmented with a 292-foot Mississippi-style paddleboat known as the Emerald Queen.

As the EQC gears up to celebrate 30 years, many within the organization are reflecting on the early days of the casino riverboat and what it meant for the local economy and in the hearts and minds of those who remember it.

Emerald Queen Chief of Staff Teresa Wright was there on Jan. 21, 1997, when the landmark riverboat was brought into the Port of Tacoma.

“I was working in the marketing department at the time; it was just so much fun to see,” Wright recalled.

The Mark Twain-era sternwheeler replica was built in Louisiana by Quality Shipyard and Kehl River Boats and shipped from Mississippi. It arrived in the Puget Sound by way of a monthlong journey by barge, where it traversed the Panama Canal and ascended the West Coast.

“Decked out with gold Victorian gingerbread and riding high on a barge, the $14-million boat resembled a wedding cake on a platter as it sailed through the shipping lanes north of Seattle,” a Jan. 22, 1997, report from The News Tribune read.

It had three decks, each purportedly the length of a football field, for a total of 45,000 square feet and packed with gaming tables featuring poker, blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps, keno, and more.

As the boat rounded Tacoma’s Point No Point and approached its moorage, members of the tribe received it with a traditional song of welcome.

By the time of the riverboat’s April 1997 debut, a few months later, there was a fervor among locals to board and experience the floating gaming facility. A crowd of close to 300 gathered in the parking lot on opening day.

“At precisely 12 o’clock, to the second, the big glass doors swing open, and the crowd surges forward,” observed Tribune writer Rob Carson. “In they go, past the big-screen TVs, the Caribbean steel band, and the giveaway BMW Z-3 roadster. They charge up the gangways of the Emerald Queen riverboat, three abreast.”

As the opening day wore on, Carson proclaimed the riverboat’s unofficial “success” based on the overflowing parking lot, the crowds around the gaming tables, and the 40-minute wait to order blackened catfish in the venue’s Cajun lounge.

That early waterfront attraction — which ultimately closed in 2004 due to development at the port — led to the tribe’s Fife casino, hotel, and event center that opened that same year. The tribe later added to its EQC brand amid the pandemic when it opened that 310,000-square-foot casino and 155-room hotel tower along I-5.

In a 2025 statement celebrating the career accomplishments of former CEO Frank Wright and Chief Operating Officer George Robinson, Puyallup Tribal Council Chairman Bill Sterud said the two did an “outstanding job” growing EQC throughout their almost three decades with the company.

“We started with nothing, and we brought in a riverboat out on the waterfront,” Sterud said. “It worked out well. With the size constraints, we had to move over here with tents, but that’s totally making another casino. That’s two casinos they were a part of. The third had to start from scratch during COVID.”

For Wright, who has been there since the beginning and is still going strong, it’s less about the riverboat and the progression of the casino’s physical spaces and more about the people.

“We have a lot of people that have been here for a very long time,” she said. “We have watched each other’s children grow; we’ve watched people get married. … And it’s just really amazing that in the (last) 30 years, we’ve been able to do that. And it’s also amazing that in nearly 30 years, we have a lot of day-one employees still with us.”