Seeking a better life away from wars and instability in their homeland, thousands of Chinese left for California when news of the gold discovery arrived in Guangzhou in 1848. By the end of 1851, as many as 25,000 Chinese people, mostly men, had made the journey to California, known as Gam Saan or "Gold Mountain." These early immigrants came with hopes of striking it rich in the gold fields, but racially exclusionary laws, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, often limited opportunities and drove people of Chinese descent to cluster in ethnic enclaves known as Chinatowns. By about 1880, Folsom had one of the largest Chinatowns in the state. Folsom's Chinatown suffered a series of devastating fires in the 1870s and 1880s, rebuilding each time. Folsom's Chinese population then began to decline. Although little remains of Folsom's Chinatown, the community once extended between the Folsom Powerhouse and the edge of the historic town of Negro Bar, and today the Chan House at 917 Sutter Street stands as one of the few remnants of Folsom's once thriving Chinese community.