Locke became the largest and most complete rural agricultural Chinese-American community in the United States. Before 1915, the area had four buildings and was part of the Locke Ranch known as Lockeport, a name later shortened to Locke. After a 1915 fire destroyed the Chinatown district in nearby Walnut Grove, displaced residents obtained permission from the owner of the Locke Ranch to establish their own separate town there on rented land. The community built a post office, school, theater, restaurants, saloons, food markets, dry goods stores, church, gambling halls, brothels, and many other businesses. Locke flourished, at one time supporting 600 permanent residents and a thousand seasonal laborers. Its residents showed resilience and perseverance throughout the twentieth century as they endured fire, floods, poverty, discrimination, neglect, and social abandonment. Locke was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, became a National Historic Landmark by 1990, and in 2005 Sacramento County subdivided it so that for the first time building owners could purchase the land beneath their buildings, a right long denied to Chinese residents by the Alien Land Law of 1913. On the 100th anniversary of its founding, Locke stood as a testament to its first residents and to generations of Chinese who helped develop agriculture in California.