Main Street, Wyoming; 703; Chinatown, WY

Main Street Wyoming is made possible by Kennicott energy company proud to be part of Wyoming's future in the coal and uranium industries which includes exploration mining and production. And the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas. In 1870 the Union Pacific Railroad announced its decision to employ Chinese workers along its rail sections. What followed was bigotry. Massacre. And finally the elimination of this group of workers from the southwest corner of our state. We're here on location in Evanston to see where historians and archaeologists are piecing together the lives of these Chinese immigrants during their years here. Join us on Main Street Wyoming to see history recreated the Chinese in southwestern Wyoming. Yeah. And his direct archaeological digs in his corner of the state including the Fort

Bridger side. But this is the oldest continually occupied site in southwest Wyoming and technically right here at this place. The entire history of southwest Wyoming is contained. There are some manifestations of history that aren't here some economics like ranching are here present railroading military everything is right here in this locality. So almost invariably anybody that passed through Wyoming in the first 20 years of our territory history before we became a territory passed through Fort Bridger very significant people like Horace Greeley Mark Twain they all stop at this site. And what's really intriguing about it is there are people such as Jim Bridger who had wives that were Native Americans and it was a multinational gathering place Shoni and utes and banks. And over time eventually you have people such as Chinese and even later on Japanese people who passed the Fort Bridger and made a contribution to the site in the building of the site. In 1853. Jim Bridger's partner of the fort to the Mormons. They built additions including a substantial stone wall. By

1857 However the fort was taken over by the US military. When the military coming in 1857 and take over this fort from the Mormons the Mormons burned down their old structure so the military can have use of it when the military coming in 1897 they bring with them or spawn is from The New York Times and from the New York newspapers. And one of those correspondents writes about the fact that there were a yellow man with trappers and specifically what they say in the newspaper is there were a bunch of trappers in this area and among the people that accompany him was a Chinese man. That's the first reference that we have to the Chinese in Wyoming. They would not honor it as the only physical evidence of chinese of the Fort Bridger our coyness was probably belonging to a Chinese worker in the laundry. It was a very harsh environment for anyone coming here in the 1860s it was very difficult to live in Wyoming. It was always the boom and bust economy that you've seen even today. So they would move in. They would take a job they had established a community. Then they'd have to go on. Now a lot of them liked that idea because they could go to greener pastures but some of them they just begin to make money and then

suddenly the construction jobs are shut down. So they were forced to either find work as a war sure or as a restaurant here or something else to try to make ends meet. The harshness of the environment was compounded by the fact a lot of times they were allowed to live in what was called the white part of town or even here at Fort Bridger they weren't allowed to live in the better substantial buildings they were put at the periphery like at the town of Merrill which was a service town for this particular fort. The launderers were to the bridge behind where we're standing right here and probably they were allowed in the laundry area but even there there was some segregation. So it was a harsh environment not just because of the climate but because of the prejudice that was extended towards Chinese by the first inhabitants of the territory while Ming. Although individual Chinese ventured into Wyoming during those years it was the building of the Transcontinental Railroad that brought them in by far larger numbers were standing on top of the Pacific railroad grade that was constructed in 1968 in 1868 when you Pacific came through.

They decided that what they were going to do is get this through as fast as possible because they received federal loans in money for the amount of tracks that they laid so they rushed through southwestern Wyoming as quick as possible. It's kind of funny. Everybody wants to get out of southwestern Wyoming too quickly. Unfortunately when they built the Great through here they found that they hadn't constructed it properly so they had to come back and reconstruct it. In fact in the first year there were major disasters that took place in Muddy Creek overflew it wiped out large sections of railroad grade. And here at Hampton they had to redo large sections of the original railroad that they put in place. Who is going to do that a lot of the workers a gun back home they're paid higher wages for putting in the railroad in Union Pacific was strapped for cash. So what they hit upon was the idea of bringing in large amounts or large numbers of Chinese laborers to work on the city's main line. And here Hampton had a small Chinese village. It was segregated from the main part of town in the main part of town you had there. Foreman and his wife and a couple of other angle families actually they were either Irish English or are sometimes Swedish. But there are also a few American families that were up and down the mainline to the

north side of town was the Chinatown in the Chinatown. People lived in sub train structures. They really dug into the ground and lived inside that part of town. It's interesting because very few people wanted to live here. There was a lot of employment throughout the nation. You could work in factories in the east you could work in gold mines. There were a lot of opportunities you could range. We do a lot of different things there was a shortage of laborers maybe not so much a shortage of laborers but shortage of people who would work for very little. And here at this almost inhospitable place called Hampton Chinese workers came in large numbers. The Chinese population numbers in Hampton varied between 10 and 100. Today the remnants of this 19th century community are strewn across the prairie disturbed only by wind and wildlife. Has all handwork up and down this main line here. And so they would use shovels and they use picks in that used to Fresno. It was drawn by horses and mules and everything was labor intensive. At this particular place they left a pretty large crew here the Pacific with a pretty large crew at this point and

they'd move them up and down but every six miles there was a section camp. So six miles to the east of here six miles to the west of here there would be a section camp. All those Chinese were tied to the community of Evanston or if you go further to the east to Rock Springs as you go for the East the Chinese community carbon. And they probably stayed here probably the longest that anyone stayed here was maybe 15 to 20 years one individual. This site has not been excavated. There is still a great deal we know about the daily lives of the Chinese living here. So you would have probably four people living in a dug out. They live tighter than we do. They lived inside less space than we do They were used to that China they needed less space. In fact they felt a little bit uncomfortable with the wider open spaces. So they live clustered in a community. The one thing that the Chinese did was have a community. There's been a lot of discussion about what makes Wyoming special today and has a sense of community. You know some people say that if you don't have community you're impoverished. The Chinese quickly understood that to succeed in the

States they had to develop community so. They were boarded him selves that way one person would stay back here and cook for the other man that went out and worked on the muddy creek cut or did work replacing rails or worked in and you know repairing a railroad grade another person might stay here and be a barber or do the service industry like laundering. But they divided themselves along divisions of labor like at the very young people between 13 and 15 years of age would be the ones that would be home cooking for the very old the people having difficulty working and I don't know how this would affect them over the long haul but sometimes people that were sick. Or had become injured not working on the rails were able to stay back and be the cooks and be the people that were taking care of the community takes care of its own people and when a time when work slow you might have the whole crew go to Evanston and in the next year they would come back but that was a place that food and commercial goods were distributed from and where banking occurred was in an instant. I hear you did your work made you money in Evanston you went and played even the Chinese.

We travelled with another unique Wyoming location in Evanston. Evanston is the first to protect and designate an archaeological site within its city limits. Was thought to start 1873 But we now know that probably begin in 1869 trying to find the tracks very constricted past for the railroad tracks to the Pacific. Every property here in Evanston Chinatown. By the 1880 census. There were 300 Chinese living in Uinta County. That included the small section towns like Hampton the service community prospering in Evanston Chinatown and the Chinese workers at the coal mines and tell me anxious for work the Chinese were employed at rock bottom wages and were met with resentment by

the other workers. Tensions soon increased in nearby Rock Springs. Coal miners were paid by the amount of coal they mined each day but the railroad decided to reduce payment to four cents per bushel. The workers walked out. The company promptly fired them and replaced them with Chinese. When the strikers tried to return to work at the four cents a bushel. The company refused to hire them. In 1885 white man in Rock Springs Wyoming killed 28 wounded 15 others and chased the remaining several hundred Chinese residents out of town. What happened as they fled Rock Springs in the railroad conductor was ordered to slow down to pick them up and put them on the trains. They brought them on the trains to Evanston. U.S. military detachment ports deal was assigned here to Evanston So they came all the way from east of Rawlins Wyoming to Evanston to protect the Chinese here the reason is that there was so much anti-Chinese sentiment in

Evanston that there was fear that they were they would be a riot here in Evanston a Gatling gun and a cannon were set now or the state hospital said there was a camp erected the south side of the tracks over there. And this community was protected but the town grew fairly rapidly during that period time of course the Chinese were then taken back to Rock Springs on a military guarded protected inside. A. Rock Spring City Limits. But they came here during the massacre. Not only as Evanston protected the archaeological site of its Chinatown. But it's rebuilt one of Chinatown's most remarkable structures. Good job. In 1990 Wyoming so already their 100th birthday. As part of that centennial celebration each community in the state of Wyoming

chose a committee to to honor our statehood. And Evanston formed a local committee who looked for a project and decided upon to to rebuild a replica joss house. That was existed in our community. For many years. And. So they began the long process of fund raising in putting an idea together and getting an architect to design the building and research do all those things necessary and. Where I got involved with the agency I work with. They came to as early on and said we would like to put the house in Depot square and that's how it all came about. The story of the Chinese in southwestern Wyoming was a disturbing chapter in our state's history. We asked him how the community of Evanston decided to deal with this. That sentiment was was there that we we felt bad what happened and

of course in Rock Springs they had the Chinese massacre. And in Evanston when that happened they removed the Chinese from Rock Springs and brought him to Evanston and and it was really. A hard time in our early history. It was time to heal some of the wound so to speak. Most of those levels people are long gone there's not any direct descendants from that time period. But as as the process started working and they began doing the research I mentioned earlier and putting this whole project together everybody really got excited about going back and honoring our Chinese heritage and telling the story. Historian Barbara Allen Bogart served as consultant for the joss house project which

was funded in part by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities. Dr. Bogart told us more about the personal lies of the Chinese and you into county. Well now these people were either working for the railroad or working in the mines were there families that were here or just man. It was overwhelmingly Chinese man who emigrated to the United States and that's true not just in this part of Wyoming but in the United States in the West as a whole. The reason for that has to do with. Immigration laws both in China and in the United States. And in the early 1880s the pressure in California especially built to. Exclude Chinese immigration and what Congress did then in the early 1880s was to put a moratorium on Chinese immigration for 10 years. Chinese who were already here were allowed to return to China but unless they could prove they had property in the United States they were not allowed to

re-image right. It was mostly Chinese men who immigrated and then the United States. Prevented Chinese women from immigrating. Or I should say Chinese women could immigrate to the United States if they could prove they were not prostitutes. Now how are you going to do that. The wages in the mines were about four cents a bushel for these individuals. But we see that they have such elaborate things that they bought or that they had. How do they get money. Well not all of the Chinese who were here were laborers. They were merchants as well. And they are listed on the census and there were several merchants who ran their own stores who did import business. So there were several relatively wealthy Chinese individuals in the community. But regardless of that where they got their wealth the Chinese wanted to have these things here there was very little that they brought with them.

Dudley Gardner says they may not have brought their rice bowl with them though their clothes of course and a few other personal items. But all of the really beautiful things that are found here and we have some on display in a child's house here were imported so that some of the Chinese merchants in town as they were in Rock Springs and other communities in the West were importers. And they imported primarily through import houses in San Francisco but also did some direct import business as well. Robert describe the situation in Evanston after the Rock Springs massacre the people in Evanston were in an uproar as everyone I Wyoming was about the massacre in Rock Springs and the unrest there and there were enough demands to remove the Chinese from the mines at Alamy at that point that when the mines in El mi reopened a month or so after the massacre in Rock Springs the Chinese were banned from the mines.

So a lot of the Chinese that their point left. You went to county. And when you look we dont have the census figures for 1890 unfortunately but by 1900 there were about 60 Chinese left and you went to county by 1920 almost all of the Chinese had left Evanston Chinatown located on land owned by the Union Pacific Railroad was burned to the ground. Today at U of Evanston the older citizen still fondly remember some of the communities Chinese residents. One of them was Mormon Charlie. He died in his late 70s or early 80s in 1939 and he was one of the vegetable vegetable peddlers in Evanston the Chinese spent their time raising vegetables using agricultural methods that they had developed in China. And managed to raise wonderful vegetables in an elevation of 68 hundred feet where everyone else just gave up any way they would peddle them around town in these huge woven basket. And a lot of people

remember Mormon Charlie very fondly. A tiny little man who could balance these two huge baskets on a bamboo pole like a yoke across his shoulders and several people have told us that when Mormon Charlie was through with his rounds and his baskets were empty that he would give little tiny children rides. Are there other individuals that we have that kind of a rich story about that they now lived in Evanston Chinatown and the other person is a woman and she is known as her name was un. Why you eat Yan but she was called China Mary. And we don't know when she came to Evanston she came to the United States in the early 1860s when she was a very young girl 13 or 14 years old. But she doesn't show up on the Evanston census until nine hundred ten and no one really knows where she lived before them but there are a lot of fabulous stories about her being a prostitute in San Francisco and she was in the mining town of Park City Utah on those kinds of things. We don't really know anything about that.

But again older residents remember her walking around town in her very traditional black satin clothes and she would allow tourists to take photographs of her but she charge them a dime for the privilege. And then she kept a big tin can of dimes at her door. And if she would ask children to run errands for her to run down to the barn fill up put at the bottom. To run down to the store and buy something for and she would give them dimes for running errands for her so she was also very fondly remembered. She had momentarily died within months of each other in 1930. Not exactly is it John's house and what role they play in the lives of the people who lived here. Well played the same role that it did for Chinese communities all over the western United States wherever Chinee settled in the United States. It's a temple. It's a place

of worship and the term joss house although we use it fairly freely now is actually a kind of a derogatory term. And no one really understands or knows what the etymology of the term is no one knows where the term comes from there are several different explanations but it is a term that whites apply to Chinese places of worship or temples the Chinese word for it is mew. Am I UW. So the joss house in Evanston was actually one of two. Two of the largest buildings in Chinatown that served social and cultural purposes. If you look at the photographs you'll see that there. The joss house which was a little bit narrower than the replica building that was constructed was probably used for a number of purposes. There would have been an altar in it something like this one where individual worshippers would have come to make visits to make prayers to make offerings to consult the oracle and that kind of thing.

It was not a place of worship in the sense of large groups gathering for rituals that was not its purpose at all but the building itself that might also have served as a hostelry for travelers coming through Chinese travelers coming through on the train and wanting a place to stay there might a bunch down here in fact. We found a reference and a diary of a Chinese diplomat who took the train from San Francisco to Philadelphia for the International Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 and he came through Evanston and apparently he stopped here and he made reference to several of the buildings. And he made a reference to one building that was a kind of a lodge or an inn. And the reason we can identify it as. Perhaps the same building as the joss house is he described an inscription over the door. And that inscription is in the just house now it's a huge wooden block with four large Chinese characters on it and the inscription indicates that

this is a place for travelers. Thank. You. The Chinese. Think it's fireworks and festive dragon continues to capture the imagination of the entire Evanston community just as it did over a hundred years ago. The Chinese New Year begins on our calendar. Sometime around the end of January rent anywhere through the end of February so it varies just like Easter in our countered varies every year according to the moon. So does the Chinese New Year and the celebration in Evanston was a big one and it involved everyone in the community and actually the only time that the life of the Chinese in Evanston appears in the white newspaper is when the New Year's celebration was going on. And the editor of the newspaper would make kind of condescending and MIAs condescending remarks about what was going on in Chinatown. But it involved house cleaning. It involved hospitality inviting guest into your home for a feast. It involved

a parade of course. And what we discovered in the course of this research is that the the dragon the silk dragon that was used in Evanston its New Year's parade was probably a dragon that was loaned by the Chinese community of Marysville in California. They had a dragon you can imagine these things are expensive. They were built in Hong Kong and imported. And so Marysville had this gorgeous dragon and they would rent it out to Chinese communities all around the US they'd they'd ship it on the train which meant that different communities then had to schedule their New Year's celebration when the dragon was available. But we looked at photographs of the Marysville dragon and photographs of the the dragon used in Evanston and it was probably the same one of the big events besides the parade was that. Every year the New Year is offered an opportunity to choose a new manager for the joss house there had to be someone in charge of the temple someone who is in charge of keeping the the

religious objects stocked. The just sticks the candles the paper money all of that kind of thing. So that person was in charge of ordering it taking the offerings from the worshippers who would come and just keeping the place clean. Well New Year's was the time when that person was chosen and the way they did it was unique really to Evanston. The fireworks of course were a big part of the Chinese New Year celebration. And what they did was they had a large wooden ball probably don't really know how big it was made a size of a basketball it's imagine. And they set it on top of a rocket and they lit it and they shot this thing into the air inside the wooden ball or attached to it were the keys to the joss house. So when the thing descended then there was a mad scramble for it and whoever managed to recover the keys was the keeper of the keys or the manager of the just house for the coming year.

Barbara shared what she personally learned during her research here. What I tried to find out in doing the research and putting the exhibit together was to suggest that these were real people living real lives. I think that's where the archaeological excavations can be most valuable because in excavating the structures these people lived in and finding evidence of the economic and social activities think caged in. We get an even richer and fuller picture of what their lives are like as human beings and not just as ethnic oddities. The work of archaeology is James thank you. But the rewards are in measurable gathering the fragments of the Chinese in southwestern Wyoming and reconstructing their lives is just beginning. The Joshes was positioned so that people could go in and it would drive out spirits. They would drive them out the back door Cinna spirits into the Bear River. The Bear River would carry the spirits down to Bear Lake and ultimately to Salt Lake. So the spirits were were taken out of

the temple. Everything was ordered here everything was tightly knit it was a tight knit community. We're going to make an interpretive side of this we're going to wreck Plax we're going to have it so that when you walk up on the side there be plaques that interpret the buildings to photograph the building photographs of the archaeological remains that you stand there and look at the way the archaeology dovetails or interfaces with the standing structure to be able to look down in the Jewish story be able see the jewelry store as a student. You'll be able to see where the pins are located at you be able to see the way the josh house was configured over here and where the Masonic Temple was. But the idea is to make it into an appropriate park for future generations. The rich history of the Chinese along the Union Pacific rail lines has been brought to life for us by local residents and scholars by studying the pieces buried and left behind. We've come to know these people and to mark fully understand the tragedy of their departure. Thanks to my guests for their insights and thanks to you for joining us on mainstreet Wyoming.

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