Chinatown

Chinese fortune seekers, propelled by the California Gold Rush of 1849 and political upheaval in China, traveled 7,300 miles across the Pacific and were among the first to arrive in Deadwood Gulch during the 1876 Black Hills Gold Rush. By 1880, Dakota Territory's Chinese population was 230, with nearly all of them in Deadwood, where 221 people—202 men and 19 women—lived. As settlers crowded the area to prospect for gold, many Chinese residents instead built businesses that served the growing mining camp, and a laundromat could earn $10 per day while miners made $4 to $7 per day. From the late 1870s through the 1910s, this stretch of Lower Main Street held grocers, boarding houses, bakeries, opium dens, gambling halls, and stables operated primarily by and for Chinese immigrants, though white settlers also did business there and Calamity Jane once lived in a shack in the neighborhood. Its character was strongly Eastern, with a giant dragon parading through the streets on Chinese New Year and funeral processions marked by fireworks to drive away evil spirits while the Deadwood City Brass Band played with the mourners. Over time, global political and economic changes drew Deadwood's Chinese residents away, some back to China and others to larger American city Chinatowns, and the last representative of the community, a janitor named Ching Ong known locally as Teeter, left in 1931. Few visible remnants remain of the district, which extended from the Wild Bill Hickok statue south along Main Street for about 600 feet.

Deadwood, South Dakota · United States