Deadwood’s Chinatown
During the 1870s a section of Main Street in Deadwood was referred to by white residents as the Badlands. It was the section of town which was mostly populated by Chinese immigrants. Many of them went to Deadwood because recent actions in the gold fields and mines of California had limited their ability to work there. Others came after working for the Central Pacific Railroad. Some worked in the placer gold fields, establishing their own claims, as did Fee Lee Wong. Others established service industries, including launderies. The Chinese launderers filtered the water used to wash miner’s clothes, recovering the gold dust which washed off.
By 1898 there were 11 restaurants listed in the Deadwood city directory, seven of them owned by Chinese. Other Chinese were employed in white owned businesses and as house servants, gardeners, waiters, blacksmiths, cooks, and as prostitutes in the brothels. Some opened opium dens, with the opium trade until 1899 controlled by Al Swearengen. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, severely limiting Chinese immigration to the United States, and the Chinese men living in Deadwood and elsewhere in America found their prospects for marriage limited. Deadwood’s Chinatown did not survive into the 21st century, and little remnants of the Chinese community remain.