The good folks of French Lick, Ind., think they can wager their way to prosperity by floating an old and tiring idea.

They're betting that a riverboat casino will generate $50 million a year by bringing back the days when all the swells from Indianapolis, Chicago and Cincinnati came to town to dabble in mineral springs and other "entertainments." Those entertainments included two of the plushest hotels in the country and even plusher casinos, the illegality of which was generally ignored.

The riverboat will be unsinkable. The overall concept may not be so buoyant.

The boat won't sink because it doesn't have to float. In fact, it won't really have to be a boat, just a structure that looks like one, surrounded by some shallow water.

A decade ago Indiana legalized casino gambling as a way to juice up the economy without taxing the innocent. But because a lot of folks feared the easy money from gambling might prove to be an undigestible corruption that the state might some day wish to expell, the law was written with an escape clause. The casinos had to be riverboats. That way they would never become permanent fixtures on the landscape. If the state, or even the host community, decided they wanted to banish the games, the operators could just cast off and float away.

Licenses were granted for 10 boats on various rivers and lakes. Boats were built and bettors qued up for cruises in places like Lawrenceburg, Rising Sun and Evansville. But pretty soon the operators noticed that all those people standing in line on the docks weren't betting. They realized they could turn the crowds over faster if the boats didn't actually go anywhere. So the law was changed and now Indiana's boats never leave port.

It didn't take long for people at a landlocked resort like French Lick to wonder why a boat to nowhere couldn't just as easily be tied up in their town. The Indiana Senate complied this week, granting French Lick the state's 11th casino boat license, even though the nearest navigable waterway is about 50 miles away. In a quaint adherence to the spirit of the state gaming law, the casino must still look like a boat. The promoters of this idea are betting that the players will flock to the resort just like they did in the Roaring '20s, and they won't care that this boat can't rock.

The bubbling waters at French Lick were nature's gift. All the other zest came from entreprenuerial spirit. The two hotels - French Lick Springs Resort & Spa and the West Baden Springs Hotel both opened in 1902. They offered sufficient ammenities to attract the likes of Franklin Roosevelt and Al Capone. Several baseball teams, including the Cincinnati Reds, held spring training there at various times. Until the Houston Astrodome was built, the 200-foot-in-diameter dome of the West Baden Hotel was the largest freestanding dome in the world.

The air of forbidden pleasure was part of the charm of the place. The girls and the gaming tables all got a wink and a nod and the local economy thrived. The town was able to get away with all of this because it was so out-of-sight-out-of-mind. French Lick is 150 miles west of Cincinnati, about 113 miles south of Indianapolis and 66 miles northwest of Louisville. Its heydays in the '20s and '30s were long before television or internet. People from the big cities could go there and have their fun in confidence that the folks back home wouldn't be watching.

But the gambling will be legal now. The crowds from the big cities have lots of other casinos to choose from, some of which are a lot closer to home. If you live in Cincnnati, you might go to French Lick once for a weekend to see the dome and pull the slots. But if you are a regular gamer, you are a lot more likely to drive the 25 miles out to Lawrenceburg and come home the same night.

French Lick had gambling when nobody else did. When some reformers finally closed the casinos in 1949, the town dried up. Now that casinos dot the river and every horse track in Ohio and Kentucky is lobbying for permission to add slot machines, I don't think the mineral springs will be enough of an added attraction to bring the crowds back to French Lick.

Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Wells.