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Ancient Chinese Secret By David Allen Daily Bulletin Sunday, August 09, 1998
[Whole article downloaded in html: 1998_08_09_chinatown] [Following: 3 Captions under 3 pictures and accompanying The Inland Valley's 'Chinatowns'] Caption 1: Some Chinese workers in the Inland Valley picked citrus fruit, while others picked grapes or dug tunnels. (Provided by Don Clucas). Caption 2: Photo and hand-written caption from the Upland Library archive apparently refer to a 1930s resident, the last of the wave of 1880s immigrants. Captain3: Don Clucas stands outside of a "dorm" in Rancho Cucamonga where Chinese men lived while working in the area vineyards. {{{I may have my own picture of this.}}}
THE INLAND VALLEY'S 'CHINATOWN'
Practically speaking, the Inland Valley's Chinese settlements were too modest to be termed "Chinatowns" because they had few if any businesses. Still, they represent a little-known segment of local history. At least six turn-of-the-century settlements have been documented: CUCAMONGA: Several dozen villagers once lived on San Bernardino Road and Klusman Avenue in nine fragile buildings made of paper and wood, with doors covered in red paper. A livery stable stood at the east end. After a deadly fire in 1919, the village was rebuilt, but it was never the same. One of those buildings still stands today, now owned by the Cucamonga Country Water District. And a few of the pepper and eucalyptus trees believed to have been planted by the Chinese survive, the only remnants of the original settlement. ALTA LOMA: A small settlement lay at what is now Amethyst Avenue and Archibald Avenue, just north of Alta Loma Elementary School, in the 1880s. The men worked in the San Gabriel Mountains digging water tunnels through, the granite under the creek beds. Some of the tunnels still provide water today to local residents through the Cucamonga County Water District. UPLAND: A village at A Street and Campus Avenue, near the Santa Fe railroad tracks, housed about 100 people in 1910, in the area then known as North Ontario, the Ontario Observer reported. "Quite a respectable village has sprung up in North Ontario's new Chinatown," the Ontario Report wrote that year. "Some of the buildings are quite neat structures." POMONA: Chinese laborers built railroad beds through Pomona, then stayed to open hand laundries and other businesses. During the 1880s, the Chinese lived in shacks between First and Second Streets east of Garey Avenue. A while-led boycott of Chinese businesses drove them from the community. CLAREMONT: Chinese here lived in modest houses on two small farms, one south of where Pilgrim Place now stands on Avery Road, the other north of East Arrow Highway bordering College Avenue. |
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