Miner Channel Historic Block

A New Site Discovered

After clearing the site for the Cineplex complex, archaeologists found the remains of a laundry on Channel Street run by immigrants from China in the early 1900s.

History of the Site

In the 1850s, the project block was close to the heart of Gold Rush Stockton, which was centered around the head of Stockton Channel.  The project area lay on the northern edge of the first Chinese community in Stockton.  Although identified as part of the Chinese quarter in Stockton, the area around the project block could be more accurately characterized as a multi-ethnic, urban neighborhood. 

In the 1900s, Stockton was an important inland port for travelers and goods. The laundry was near the waterfront, in an area of Stockton that had many services for travelers. The laundry’s neighbors were a hotel, a brewery, stables, a dairy, and another Chinese laundry. While no archaeological features were identified on the site of the brewery, a deposit of bottles was identified that was most likely associated with the brewery.  Some families also lived nearby, in small houses along Miner Avenue.  Behind the Chinese laundry was a creek called Miner Channel. During spring, this creek often flooded. Around 1917, it was piped underground to stop the floods.

Digging deeper, archaeologists found artifacts that belonged to the Tretheway family, who lived on Miner Avenue in the 1870s. The Tretheway’s were from England, and they had six children. Mr. Tretheway was a

carpenter.

Miner Channel flowed right behind the Tretheways’ backyard. Although Miner Channel flooded, it might also have been a good place to hunt and fish and to play games.

Nineteenth-century Stockton was a busy place to live. It was the main port for goods and crops from the southern Central Valley. The Tretheway’s neighbors included other families and some businesses

Chinese Heritage in Stockton

Chinese settlers first came to California for the Gold Rush. Most were men who left their families in China and came to America to find work. Many wanted to return to China when they had made enough money. Chinese men worked as miners, railway workers, cooks, servants, laundrymen, fishermen, and farm workers.

Early Chinese settlers in Stockton lived near the block where the City Centre Cineplex now stands. They built a temple on Hunter Street. The settlers worked in laundries, as servants, and helped to build the levees along rivers. Later many of Stockton’s Chinese settlers moved to East Washington Street.

During the 1880s, many Americans began to resent the Chinese. In 1882 the U.S. Government signed a law (the Chinese Exclusion Act) that banned many Chinese from

coming to this country.  In Stockton, townspeople tried to have Chinese laundries banned from town.  This attempt was not successful.

Life was still hard for the Chinese in the 20th century.  In Stockton, Chinese worked as laundrymen, in factories, and on farms. In the 1960s, the East Washington Chinatown was demolished when the Stockton downtown was

redeveloped.

Today there is a large and active Chinese-American community in Stockton.  Read an interview with Sylvia Sun Minnick, historian of Stockton's Chinese community here.