The rise and fall of Park City’s Chinatown

PARK CITY, Utah—Leland Stanford was not completely honest with his constituency as California’s eighth governor when referring to Chinese immigrants. He was one of the “big four” who funded the Central Pacific, the western length of the world’s first transcontinental railroad, as Stephen Ambrose documented in his historical volume, Nothing Like It in the World. While Stanford may have decried the immigrant Chinese, he admitted to President Andrew Johnson, “As a class, they are quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious, and economical… Without the Chinese, it would have been impossible to complete the Western Portion of this great National Highway,” referring to the challenges of tunneling through the Sierra Nevada Mountains between Sacramento and Reno. Eventually out of work once the job was done, a few of those immigrants landed in Park City. 

Park City’s railroad spur station, or depot, is where present-day’s Spot is located on lower Main Street. The rail line came to town on today’s Rail Trail from Coalville and Echo. A short walk up Swede Alley, one can find the State Liquor store and China Bridge parking structure. Beneath lies one of Utah’s earliest Chinatowns, ashes and pottery sherds mostly forgotten.

In 1868, and again in 1875, immigration treaties between China and the US barred most Chinese women and children from entering the country. Bringing Chinese men to work didn’t include them settling, thus they would have to return to their families when the work was finished, ideally earning enough to buy a small farm. Adventuring east at the promise of consistent work during the Gold Rush and railroad construction appealed to husbands and fathers who wanted better lives for their families.

Christopher Merritt, Ph.D., historian at the Utah State Preservation Office, explains, “Due to the economic and social problems in China, over 30 million Chinese residents looked overseas to define economic opportunities to support their families, either at home or with hope to create new lives in the United States. The first big wave of Chinese immigrants to the United States really came with the construction of the transcontinental railroad…bringing upwards of 13,000 to 15,000 new Chinese immigrants to our country.”

Construction labor demanded inexpensive hands, which the Chinese could deliver, being paid $1.10 ($34 in 2025) per day versus their Anglo counterparts at $1.75 per day (building railroads near Echo, for example). This characteristic of their presence in the West would set off prejudice that was even written into law. 

Even though the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 stopped further Chinese immigrants, other restrictions would make it more challenging for them to earn enough to return to China. According to the historical volume Treasure Mountain Home, nearly immediately after Park City was incorporated as a city in 1884, “one of the first ordinances to pass forbade Chinese laundries on Main Street,” of which, according to the old Sanborn maps, there were three. By 1889, there were seven around town. 

Yet still, Merritt explains, “American West mining communities offered the best economic opportunity for these immigrants.” Old-time Parkite Fraser Buck (as documented by historian Don C. Conley in 1976) says that despite such challenges, the residents of Chinatown would grow produce, maintain laundry facilities around town, and build restaurants to keep the miners fed. They lived in Park City’s Chinatown, consisting of roughly fourteen houses below Rossi Hill.

“From both a safety perspective, and from a racially segregated perspective, most Chinese would try to live in clustered Chinatowns, areas that were perhaps of lesser quality land than other parts of a community. In Park City’s case, they settled along Poison Creek,” Merritt says. And since residents of Rossi Hill preferred to bypass the Chinatown, they built a bridge over it, known as China Bridge. The Marsac Mill, just a memory today, loomed above Chinatown in Park City. 

Despite being surrounded by a wildly different culture, Chinese immigrants made a place for themselves without forgetting their own traditions. Celebrations such as Lunar New Year were novel to Park City’s early residents. They imported high-quality goods from China and sold such novelties in their stores. 

China Mary was one of those merchants. Little is known or documented about such store owners, but Merritt had written a Utah Women’s History article about her. “Ah Yuen [Mary’s given Chinese name]…arrived in the United States between 1863 and 1868…she traveled from San Francisco, California, to Park City, Utah, by the 1880s and started a ‘China shop’ with a wealthy, but unknown, Chinese husband.”

 For perspective, very few Chinese women immigrated to the United States. And by 1868, that privilege all but ceased. China Mary is one of the few women who made it to, and made her mark on, Park City.

Merritt’s article continues, “Because of the boom in Park City, there were well over 400 Chinese residents in the bustling town during the 1880s and 1890s, representing likely the largest or second largest Chinatown in Utah Territory.”

As the century turned, turmoil between white laborers and Chinese immigrants escalated because Chinese stores and restaurants competed with other businesses. So, in 1903, “local labor unions campaigned to boycott Chinese-owned businesses and white-owned businesses with Chinese employees,” according to Mahala Ruddell’s article, “The Erasure of a Community,” for Park City Museum. 

Ruddell also describes other bits of tense history: “Countless fights or instances of bullying were only casually mentioned in The Park Record’s pages amongst birth announcements and society updates. Children and drunks were often caught throwing rocks at Chinatown homes and businesses.”

It was around this time that China Mary left Park City, moving to Evanston, Wyoming, according to Merritt’s timeline. She lived out her days there, passing away on “January 13, 1939, at an age estimated between 85 and 91.”

By the 1920s, Ruddell reports, “Only three Chinese families remained: the Thon family, who operated a laundry; and the Mon and Chong families, who each operated restaurants. After World War II, even these families had left, citing better opportunities elsewhere.”

Today, there is little evidence of how Chinese immigrants helped Park City become the town it is. We have the China Bridge parking structure, and before that, there was the long China Bridge staircase from Marsac to Swede Alley, through which my friends and I would ride our bikes. However, the original China Bridge was burned in the fire of 1898 along with most of the town. The second bridge, built shortly after the fire, stood until the mid-20th century.

Considering the purpose of China Bridge, an act of segregation, referring to Chinatown may be more fitting. The memory of Chinatown Park City is long gone, documented here and there. If there’s a shadow evading our historical acuity, this is probably the one.