Chinese Camp - Strong Link to Groveland

By 1850 4,000 Chinese had arrived in California hoping to send their riches back to support families in China. This number quickly increased to 20,000 almost entirely male miners. A group of about 200 Chinese arrived in Tuolumne County employed in gold-washing by an English firm at Campo Salvado just over the ridge from Camp Washington. In 1850 the Foreign Miners Tax, attempted to levy a $20 per month fee on all foreign miners. It was primarily enforced with the Chinese. It was so burdensome that foreign miners left nearby large towns of Sonora and Columbia in droves or refused to pay the tax. By 1852 the tax was reduced to $3 per month. 

Most Chinese, forced out of Campo Salvado, moved over the ridge to Camp Washington. As other miners left poorly producing claims, the Chinese miners were persistent and stayed to work the “quit claims” they left behind. The hardworking Chinese ran service businesses such as laundries, eateries and stores and mined in their spare time. They soon outnumbered other mining groups and the area became known as Chinese Camp. 

In the 1860s a variety of Chinese establishments lay along the west end of Chinese Camp's Main Street. There were residences, temples, a market garden, a food-fish pond, opium dens, joss houses, and herbalists. By the mid to late 1850s a commercial area had developed in Chinese Camp which served people from all over the world. It included general stores, dance halls, saloons, fandango hall, boarding houses, four fraternal orders, liveries, a hook and ladder company and St. Xavier Church.

Chinese Camp became a transfer stop on the transportation route of goods and people from San Francisco to Stockton and onward to supply outlying foothill towns such as Big Oak Flat and Garrote (Groveland's first name) and Yosemite. In 1853 stages ran between Sonora and Chinese Camp every 3 hours or so. By 1871 the two-story Garrett House Hotel housed travelers in Chinese Camp. By the 1880s the town's nearly all-male Chinese population began a steep decline and by 1920 only one married couple remained in Chinese Camp.