Chinese of the West

At the height of gold rush fever, thousands of Chinese came to call Oregon home, at least temporarily. More than 150 years later, their legacy, and that of those who followed, lives on in towns across Oregon. By Megan Monson Each February, the historic gold-mining town pays homage to the time when it hosted the earliest Chinese population in Oregon. Bright red paper lanterns hang from the 1850s-era brick storefronts. Children crowd into the old International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) building for origami, calligraphy and yo-yo demonstrations. The old brick buildings around town feature sessions on cooking, astrology, feng shui, martial arts, acupuncture, and Chinese culture and history.

The festival is a modern-day reminder of the heady days of Oregon's gold rush, when thousands of Chinese left their famine- and war-stricken homeland behind to follow their dream of striking it rich in Gum San, the Land of the Golden Mountain.

Smith points to the site a few feet south of the Chinese Fountain where, just four years ago, a road crew stopped work after unexpectedly uncovering relics from the past. A subsequent archaeological dig dated the broken Chinese bowls and tea cups, handmade bottles and fragments of opium to the 1850s and '60s, establishing Jacksonville's Chinatown as the earliest in Oregon.

But it was not the only one, by far. During the 1880s--the height of gold rush fever--nearly 10,000 Chinese lived in vibrant communities in a dozen Oregon towns, among them Astoria, Portland, Salem, Jacksonville, Klamath Falls, John Day, Granite and Baker City.

A PRICELESS TREASURE
Just two blocks off Main Street in the high-desert town of John Day, the Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum offers a perfectly preserved time capsule of Chinese pioneer life. The dark interior of the tiny stone building looks like it's just waiting for proprietors Ing "Doc" Hay and Lung On, who bought the building in 1887, to open the iron door for the day's business.

Boxes of Doc Hay's Chinese herbal medicines are stacked floor-to-ceiling in the apothecary, carefully labeled in flowing Chinese script and protected by a window of iron bars. The dry-goods section is crammed with groceries from times past, including cardboard boxes of Beechnut tobacco and unopened cans of Whitmor's marshmallows. An iron wok awaits the evening meal in the kitchen.

"I love the shoes under the bed in Doc Hay's room, it's so personal and intimate," says Mary Oberst, Oregon's first lady and a longtime supporter of the museum. "It feels like he just stepped out for a minute."

The store served as a social, medical and religious center for Eastern Oregon's sizable Chinese miner population, which the 1879 Census counted at 2,468, compared to just 960 white miners. When the gold played out at the turn of the century, most of the sojourners (so called because their stay was meant to be temporary) either returned home or moved to urban areas such as Portland and San Francisco.

Doc Hay and Lung On stayed on in John Day as respected members of the community. Lung On, known particularly for his savvy business deals, went on to open the first car dealership in eastern Oregon, and Doc Hay's widely known medical practice drew patients from four states.

The store was boarded up-with inventory intact-after the partners' deaths, Lung On in 1940 and Doc Hay in 1952. It stayed that way, the contents perfectly preserved by the even temperatures of the building, made of quarried volcanic duff, and the region's dry cold, until the city of John Day opened it for tours in 1977. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 2005, and shortly afterward, First Lady Oberst led a fund-raising campaign that raised $1.5 million to preserve and restore the museum. Among the finds when the Kam Wah Chung inventory was cataloged for the first time: a stash of pre-Prohibition whiskey secreted in the walls.

"There are people in the John Day area who still remember being treated by Doc Hay," says curator Christina Sweet. "They still talk about the awful taste of his herbal medicine."

AN ENDURING LEGACY
Doc Hay and Lung On chose to be buried in their adopted country, but most of the sojourners did not. At the Chinese Cemetery in Baker City, the most notable feature is what isn't there-the graves. Scattered among the sage and greasewood are nearly 80 indentations where Chinese were interred until their remains could be shipped back home. A lone headstone marks the final resting spot for one Lee Chue: born 1882, died 1938. Wooden reader boards commemorate Baker County's Chinese history, as does a modern pavilion building, designed and built in Suzhou, China.

The hard work of the Chinese miners is preserved all over Oregon in the form of carefully stacked walls of rock and miles of mining ditches. Northeast of John Day, the "Chinese Walls" (also called the Ah Hee Diggings) site near the tiny town of Granite features a 16-acre maze of walls as high as 10 feet tall. "The Chinese bought this claim after the white miners were done with it, and they stacked the leftover tailings into walls so they could mine the 'fines' underneath," explains Granite Mayor Fred Corbin. The walls, which Corbin describes as "sort of my passion," have been cleared of brush so visitors can wander the maze.

Reminders of the Chinese contributions to 19th century Oregon can be found in nearly every historic community in the state. In southern Oregon's Applegate Valley, interpretive signs along the ¾-mile Gin Lin Mining Trail tell the story of successful mining boss Gin Lin, who deposited more than a million dollars of gold dust in a Jacksonville bank. Near Myrtle Creek, travelers can still see remnants of the 33-mile-long China Ditch, built by 200 Chinese laborers in the 1890s to supply water for gold-mining operations.

In Portland, a thriving Chinatown hosts several Chinese festivals throughout the year. At the High Desert Museum in Bend, visitors can walk through the Hi Loy Chinese Store in the museum's Silver City. Underground tours of Pendleton include glimpses of Chinese living quarters and places of business.

The story of the Chinese miners in Oregon is a rich one. It's a story of high hopes, of hard work and of helping open this frontier state to settlement. "At one time, there were thousands of Chinese miners living here," says Mayor Corbin, gesturing down the hill from the wood houses that are home to Granite's 27 permanent residents. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"