History & Culture

2020 Asian Pacific American Employees Association News Letter

Rich History on the Malheur
By: Yiqiang Gu, Planning Engineer, Alaska and Pacific Northwest Regions

Chinese immigrants have long been a part of the building of today’s American West. Their involvement in the California Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad may be the first things to come to mind, but they also had significant involvement in Oregon.

Canyon City, Oregon became a major attraction to gold miners when word got out in June 1862 that Whiskey Gulch was the place to be. Soon after, Chinese miners from California and southwest Oregon near Jacksonville also joined in the search for gold in the area. According to historical data, by 1870, 42 percent of Grant County’s population (940) and 69 percent of its miners were Chinese. Further records suggest that between 1870 to 1880, over 80 percent of all placer and hydraulic gold mining operations were Chinese-owned and operated . Although the Chinese miners had the same goal as Euro-American miners with a desire to go after the untapped resources of America’s West, there were barriers that slowly caused their presence to disappear. The challenges were language barriers, cultural/food differences, as well as the increasing anti-Chinese sentiment that later hardened into legislation in the 1880s. A number of legacy misunderstandings eventually forced Chinese miners out of the area. As a result, and in combination with other political actions like the Chinese Exclusion Act, by 1890, only 6 percent of the county’s population was Chinese.

Over the years, archeological explorations on the Malheur National Forest (MNF) area clarified some of the misunderstandings. Archaeologists identified some critical areas in the Middle Fork area of John Day River, where they located nine cabin sites associated with Chinese mining. Archaeologists discovered artifacts like Chinese brown glazed stoneware, winter green porcelain, wok fragments, imported cooking oil and tea containers, and other Chinese related items at these sites. Excavations in 2019 confirmed the presence of a Chinese blacksmith shop, the first such site to be found in Oregon.
The work completed on the MNF was organized as part of the Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (OCDP), a grassroots Federal/State/local partnership which emphasizes the shared stewardship of our important yet fragile cultural history. In 2016, the MNF, the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA), the Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site, and the Grant County Historical Museum formed OCDP. It is co-directed by Don Hann at MNF and Chelsea Rose at SOULA. Other key partners now include the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest, the Medford and Prineville District BLM, the Oregon Historical Society, the Forest Service Passport In Time (PIT) volunteer program, the Portland Chinatown Museum, the Wing Luke Museum, and the Oregon Archaeological Society. The OCDP has established a Chinese American Advisory Committee, which includes retired Olympic National Forest Supervisor, Dale Hom, to help determine project goals and priorities. The OCDP was recently selected for the Oregon Heritage Excellence Award for their contribution to further our understanding of Chinese heritage in Oregon.

Passport In Time (PIT) is a nationwide Forest Service volunteer program where interested volunteers pair up with archaeologists and work together on heritage projects on public lands. Contributions by PIT volunteers have benefited most of the OCDP projects on the MNF. In 2019, the Blue Mountain Ranger District hosted a PIT project directed by district archaeologist, Katee Withee, where volunteers donated over 680 hours and youth crew members contributed 60 hours of work on the Chinese sites. For more information on PIT, visit their website: http://passportintime.com/.
The OCDP is committed to working with university students to help train the next generation of leaders in the archaeology of the Chinese diaspora in Oregon. Jocelyn Lee is working on her MA at the University of Boston. Her thesis topic is “Small Towns and Mining Camps: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Diasporic Communities in Oregon.” She was a crew leader at the SOULA field school that was held on MNF in 2019. She stayed an additional two weeks to translate some of the historic documents at the Kam Wah Chung Museum. Jocelyn has also done fieldwork at the Boston Chinatown and in China (where she met Chelsea when they were both working on a project through Stanford University).

Historians commonly portray 19th Century Chinese immigrants as unskilled laborers who were driven by famine and warfare to flee their homeland to work as virtual slaves. Evidence recovered at sites on the MNF and other locations in Oregon and historical research conducted by partners in the OCDP reveals a picture in which entrepreneurs from Southern China, who had a century of experience in organizing gold mining operations in southeast Asia, brought their knowledge and skills to Oregon. They built complex systems of dams and ditches for managing water for mining, organized themselves into companies in which all members shared in the risks and profits of the venture and created living sites supplied with luxuries imported from China. They contributed to the economic and social foundation of the state, and their stories deserve to be told as an important chapter in our shared history.

We are able to learn more about Chinese heritage in American West thanks to the efforts and dedication of people like Don Hann and OCDP partners like Chelsea Rose at SOULA. But they can’t do this alone. If you are interested in participating in heritage volunteer programs, or if you’d just like to learn more about the history, please reach out to Don or APAEA.
Archaeologist and MNF employee Don Hann leading PIT volunteers on a visit to the Happy Camp site.

Take a virtual tour of the Ah Heng placer mine on the Malheur National Forest: https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd519936.pdf.

Also, for more heritage information, please visit us at: https://exploreapaheritage.com/.APAEA would like thank Don Hann, the Malheur NF staff, SOULA, and other partners for their continual support on the discovery and sharing of APA heritage in America.

Jefferson Public Radio interviewed Forest Archaeologist Don Hann and Chelsea Rose from Southern Oregon University to discuss the Oregon Chinese Diaspora project.  Thank you very much to Jefferson Public Radio for allowing us to share the interview at the link below.

 http://www.tinyurl.com/y676hqah

2019 Passport in Time Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project Preliminary Overview

Left: Don Hann speaking to a group of volunteers at a site on the Malheur National Forest Center: Volunteers excavate a potential hearth feature Right: Don Hann and volunteers use metal detector survey to identify potential sites

Take a Virtual Tour of the Ah Heng Mining Complex

Relive the Ah Heng Mining Complex 

2016 marks the 50^th Anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 signed by President Johnson (amended in 2014). Passage of the Act was a watershed event that marked a fundamental shift in how Americans and the federal government regarded the role of historic preservation in modern life. The Act established the legal framework and incentives to preserve historic buildings, landscapes and archeology.