The Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site and the Chinese Diaspora in Oregon by Don Hann

Bio

Don Hann has worked as an archaeologist for over thirty years, most of this time spent on the Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. There he managed one of the largest Federal cultural resource programs in Oregon, comprising over 6,000 documented archaeological and cultural sites. Hann has been a proponent of public archaeology for most of his career and has worked with volunteers from the Forest Service’s Passport In Time (PIT) program since 1994. His research interests include American Indian rock art, lithic technology, and the Chinese diaspora in Oregon. In 2017 he co-founded the Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (OCDP) with Chelsea Rose of Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology. Since his retirement from Federal service in 2022 Hann has remained active in supporting roles with the OCDP and serves on the board of the Friends of the Kam Wah Chung. He received the American Rock Art Research Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. His most recent publication is Pushing the Boundaries: The Pictographs and Petroglyphs of Oregon’s Harney Basin, co-authored with Daniel Leen and published by the Oregon Archaeological Society Press. He contributed the article “Chinese Mining Kongsi in Eastern Oregon: A Case Study in Cultural Amnesia” to the Winter2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly special issue on the Chinese Diaspora in Oregon.

Presentation

The Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site and the Chinese Diaspora in Oregon. The Kam Wah Chung is the last surviving building from the John Day Chinatown. It was established in the 1870s as one of several stores supporting Chinese gold miners. Chinese immigrants dominated placer gold mining in eastern Oregon during the 19th century. They are often portrayed as unskilled laborers subsisting on scraps of gold recovered by rewashing the waste rocks abandoned by White miners. In fact, many were highly skilled at the art and science of gold mining. Most were from Guangdong province from which placer mining companies worked in southeast Asia for a century before the discovery of gold in Oregon. Chinese placer mining companies operating adjacent to the town of John Day were the largest employers in Grant County during the closing decades of the 19th century. Besides serving as a store, the Kam Wah Chung was a doctor’s office and social center for the residents of Chinatown. It was owned and operated by Lung On and Ing Hay who skillfully transitioned to serving a dominantly Euro American clientele after the majority of the Chinese residents left John Day as the gold deposits dwindled around the turn of the 20th century.

The Kam Wah Chung is a unique time capsule preserving thousands of artifacts and archives within its thick stone walls and the dry climate of eastern Oregon. It is a National Historic Landmark and an Oregon State Heritage Site. Our understanding of the Kam Wah Chung has been greatly enhanced since 2016 with the formation of the Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (OCDP). The mission of the OCDP is to promote research and education on Oregon's early Chinese residents. The project uses local history and public archaeology to highlight the transnational lives of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans who helped establish the early infrastructure and economic industries of Oregon. Originally focused heavily on the study of Chinese placer miners and railroad construction workers, the project has grown to include salmon cannery workers along the Oregon coast and Columbia River, hops farmers in the Willamette Valley and cowboys and ranchers in eastern Oregon.