“I felt I could always go back to any one of those because I always gave plenty of notice and always left for the right reason, which was career growth,” Rigot noted. The Trenton area native had taken a job as a dealer at the California Hotel and Casino. Until last April, Rigot was the general manager of one of the latter state’s most popular gaming venues, Hollywood Casino in Baton Rouge – just one of the highlights of a career path that began rather modestly in Vegas when he left the Air Force in 1976. Now you see casinos sprouting up from the mid-states down to Louisiana.” From Resorts, the proliferation of gambling has taken off. Resorts was the first casino to open up outside of Nevada. In 1978 that was the first time that legalized gaming was allowed to take place outside of the state of Nevada.

“When I broke into the industry, gambling resided only in the state of Nevada. There are no coin slots on slot machines anymore,” said the new chief executive officer of Valley Forge Casino Resort, laughing.Īnd while few are daring to compare Atlantic City to Vegas these days, it was the launching of the boardwalk town’s first casino, Resorts International, in the spring of 1978 that sparked the gradual mushrooming of casinos outside of Vegas that ultimately enriched Rigot’s resume considerably, he recalled. “Like a lot of things, the technology has changed.

UPPER MERION >Back when Jim Rigot got his foot in the door of the casino industry, you needed to pack up your yen for gambling and jump on a plane for Vegas with a pocketful of coins.

Valley forge casino ownership