Qualla: Catawba Two Kings Casino

Catawba Two Kings Casino: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KeysNC, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Catawba Indian Nation finally opened a casino in July 2021, they did it from a collection of red modular buildings sitting on sixteen acres of newly placed federal trust land overlooking Interstate 85. The casino was the first the tribe had ever owned. It had taken eight years to get there. The fight to put that land into trust ran through two presidential administrations, four U.S. senators from two states, more than a hundred opposing state legislators, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who already operated the only two casinos in North Carolina and did not particularly want a third.

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Image: KeysNC | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catawba Two Kings Casino: The 1993 Settlement and What It Cost

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nascar1996, Public domain. The Catawba's home is the Rock Hill area of South Carolina. The tribe gained federal recognition in 1993 through the Catawba Indian Tribe of South Carolina Land Claims Settlement Act, but the recognition came with a condition that would shape everything afterward: the Catawba agr...

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Image: Nascar1996 | Public domain

Catawba Two Kings Casino: Project Schoolhouse

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap.org, CC BY-SA 2.0. In September 2013, the Catawba announced what they had been calling, internally, Project Schoolhouse. The plan: a six hundred million dollar casino resort in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, thirty miles northwest of the Rock Hill reservation. They bought nearly seventeen acres ov...

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Image: Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap.org | CC BY-SA 2.0

Catawba Two Kings Casino: The Reversal

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KeysNC, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Catawba refiled. They petitioned Congress. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham introduced Senate Bill 790 in 2019 to authorize the land transfer directly. North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis supported it. In March 2020, the Interior Department reversed its ...

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Image: KeysNC | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catawba Two Kings Casino: The SkyBoat Problem

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KeysNC, CC BY-SA 4.0. In March 2022, the chief compliance officer of the National Indian Gaming Commission notified the Catawba that the SkyBoat contract violated federal law. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act forbids non-tribal corporations from holding management authority over tribal gaming, and the...

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Image: KeysNC | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catawba Two Kings Casino: The Name

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KeysNC, CC0. The casino takes its name from two sources. The first is the eighteenth-century Catawba leader King Hagler, who died in 1763 after a long career of diplomatic survival between the Cherokee, the colonial governments, and the encroaching settlers. The second is the city of Kings Mo...

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Image: KeysNC | CC0