Santa Ana Chinatown

eir wives and children in China and come to America and eventually throughout California and settled in Orange County to build railroads, labor in the local orchard, grape and celery fields, and start up small businesses. I found this note in an article on the Orange Coast Voice website:

It was a need for foreign labor that led to the first wave of immigrants to the United States from China. Chinese farm workers were hired by German settlers in Anaheim who needed laborers to cultivate grapes on their vineyards in the mid-19th Century. Asian American Studies scholar Patricia Lin notes that the Chinese were not only “expert grape growers and pickers, but they were used extensively in the construction of irrigation ditches, wine cellars, and casks.” One hundred twenty-five Chinese would later work to extend the Southern Pacific Railroad line from Los Angeles to Anaheim in 1873 and to Santa Ana in 1877. The same article also cites what happened to the unfortunate denizens of Santa Ana’s Chinatown:

The neighborhood had been occupied by about 200 Chinese in Santa Ana, who were evacuated just before the fire. Calling the fire a “holocaust,” The Los Angeles Times reported, in language reflective of the era, that the “burned-out chinks” would be compensated. But in the end the city refused to pay the displaced Chinese residents more than trivial compensation. Now that sounds a lot more believable to me! Shouldn’t the City of Santa Ana put up a marker on the site of the burned out Chinatown, noting what happened? It would be a nice way to acknowledge the contributions the Chinese made to our area – and the price they paid in the end.