A casino resort rises in Maryland, transforming sand to shimmer

Oxon Hill, Maryland

As MGM opens a new resort this week on a hillside overlooking the Potomac River, it will deliver a victory in a long effort to develop a shoreline carved from a sand-and-gravel pit.

The US$1.4 billion resort at National Harbor, a mini-city south of Washington, puts casino gambling just 11 kilometres from the nation's capital and is a prominent addition to Prince George's County - a long overlooked but upwardly striving county of 900,000 residents, the majority of them black.