At the Ah Hee Diggings on Granite Creek, Chinese miners performed backbreaking labor across sixteen acres of rocks, stacking and re-stacking rock piles back, forth, up, and down the valley to expose the streambed, then using gold pans, rockers, or sluice boxes to recover gold missed by earlier operations from the streambed sediments. Tough times in China in the mid-1800s had driven many men to seek better lives elsewhere; some farmed, dug ditches, or opened businesses, while others turned to mining, often hoping to send money home and one day rejoin their families. Chinese miners could not file their own claims, but claim holders could lease or sell worked-out claims to Chinese owned companies, and along Granite Creek at least ten Chinese companies held claims. Far from home, Chinese immigrants held to tradition amid hardship and isolation, favoring rice, vegetables, and tea, and on rare days off traveling to town to shop and perhaps visit an herbal doctor, joss house, opium smoking establishment, or gambling room. Some returned to China with money, others died here or went home no better off, and a few built a Chinese American legacy and community that continues today.