Defining Historical Community Boundaries with GIS: Walla Walla’s Chinatown
Author(s): Jonathan M Haller; Ashley M Morton
Year: 2015
Summary
In 2014 Fort Walla Walla Museum performed a cultural resource survey of the City Hall Parking Lot in downtown Walla Walla, Washington. Archival research, namely Sanborn fire insurance maps, revealed this location to be a major locus of activity including a Chinatown from 1888 and up to around 1905. While Sanborn maps indicate an area in which many Overseas and American-born Chinese lived and ran businesses, other sources like city directories and federal census records show Walla Walla's Chinatown to be largely under documented. Furthermore, local accounts of the Chinatown location conflict with these sources and indicate multiple instances of a Chinatown. GIS analysis was utilized as a means to visualize the likelihood of fixed boundaries for this Chinese community.
Cite this Record
Defining Historical Community Boundaries with GIS: Walla Walla’s Chinatown. Jonathan M Haller, Ashley M Morton. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 434153)
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Keywords
General
CRM
•
Gis
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Overseas Chinese
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Temporal Keywords
20th Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 532