As symbols of the Industrial Revolution, railroads were powerful centralizing and dispersing mediums, concentrating populations in urban areas while also scattering people and communities across …

Oregon History Project

For over seven decades, Baker City had an area referred to as Chinatown by Chinese and whites alike. Founded in 1864, the town owed its …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Seid Back was a Chinese immigrant, merchant, and labor broker whose reputation for honesty, philanthropy, business acumen, sense of community, and patriotic zeal made him …

Oregon Encyclopedia

Oregon District Attorney J. F. Caples wrote this letter to the Portland City Council warning about the city’s violation of a state law banning the …

Oregon History Project

This photograph shows John Day’s Chinatown in 1909. The large structure at the left is the Kam Wah Chung building, which served as Chinatown’s  social …

Oregon History Project

This telegram to Oregon Governor Sylvester Pennoyer from Judge Walter Gresham warns that extending the Chinese Exclusion Act might incite violence and asks that Pennoyer …

Oregon History Project

The October 1886 issue of West Shore magazine, based in Portland, featured this lithograph and an article under the title A Night in Chinatown. …

Oregon History Project

Under territorial and federal land-claim acts, white farmers took possession of large tracts of land around the lower banks of the coastal rivers and their …

Oregon History Project

In 1848, two years after Lindsay Applegate traveled through the Rogue River Valley, the discovery of gold in Sutter’s Mill, California, brought prospectors through southwest …

Oregon History Project

This picture shows an unusually quiet intersection at the corner of southwest Second and Washington streets, just a few blocks from Chinatown’s heart at southwest …

Oregon History Project