Notorious and Profitable: Exploring Fresno's China Alley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Brought to California’s Central Valley by the opportunity to mine for gold and the construction of the railroad, Chinese immigrants created a fast-growing and prosperous Chinatown in Fresno. So infamous was this neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that journalist and researcher Schyler Rehart stated "[t]he Chinese gambling dens of West Fresno were considered the most notorious and profitable of any in the nation." However, historical and archaeological research conducted on a recently unearthed feature in the commercial center of Fresno’s Chinatown reveal a more complicated picture of these Overseas Chinese, who were inexorably tied to the burgeoning agricultural industry of the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25865