Mohegan — In the 1990s, the Mohegan and Cowlitz Indian tribes embarked on the road to federal recognition.

The Mohegans got there in 1994, the Cowlitz six years later. In 1996, the Mohegans opened Mohegan Sun, the flagship casino in a gaming enterprise that has grown to include properties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and now seeks to expand internationally.

The Cowlitz, with the Mohegans’ help, expect to break ground on a $400 million to $500 million casino near the city of La Center, in southwest Washington state, by year’s end.

“We got held up for six years, that’s the difference,” Bill Iyall, the Cowlitz chairman, said Wednesday during a visit to Mohegan by members of the Cowlitz tribal council and attorneys for the Pacific Northwest tribe.

During a three-day stay, the Cowlitz contingent is studying the “best practices” the Mohegans have developed in operating not only casinos but all facets of tribal government, including road systems and other infrastructure, public safety departments and health departments.

Under agreements the tribes forged in 2004, the Mohegans are to help develop the Cowlitz casino and will manage it for seven years once it’s built. Despite a seemingly endless series of setbacks and delays, neither tribe has wavered in its commitment to the deal.

“It would have been cheaper and easier to walk away,” said Mark Brown, a Mohegan councilor who was tribal chairman from 2000 to 2005. "But morally, that wouldn't have been the right thing to do."

Iyall said the federal government repeatedly “moved the finish line,” altering policies and regulations that complicated the Cowlitz bid to have land taken into trust. A 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar posed another obstacle.

In 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the tribe’s application for a 152-acre reservation, prompting a lawsuit by interests opposed to the Cowlitz casino plan. A federal judge dismissed the suit last December, paving the way for the BIA to take 152 acres into trust for the Cowlitz, establishing the tribe’s first reservation.

Despite lingering appeals, the tribe will pursue financing for the project and proceed with design work and construction, Iyall said.

Kevin Brown, the current Mohegan chairman and Mark Brown's brother, noted that the Cowlitz casino site is less than 30 miles from Portland, Ore., considered one of the top three untapped casino markets in the United States along with Boston and Houston.

The Mohegans competed last year for a Boston-area casino license, losing out to Wynn Resorts, which has yet to begin construction on a $1.7 billion project in Everett.

bjhallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck