China Camp State Park

China Camp State Park in San Rafael preserves one of California’s most important surviving Chinese American fishing sites alongside marshland, trails, and a prehistoric shell midden. The area was first home to Coast Miwok communities, then passed through Spanish mission-era disruption and later nineteenth-century ranching and industry. By the 1880s, Chinese immigrants and other Chinese Americans had built a shrimp-fishing village of about 500 residents whose catch supplied markets as far as China and Hawaii. Restrictive fishing laws and later environmental decline weakened the community, though the Quan family sustained it into the 21st century. Created in 1976 after opposition to major development, the park protects both recreation land and a rare shoreline historic community.

Santa Venetia, California · United States