“The Chinese in the Sierra Nevada” Student-Proposed Museum Exhibit

11 min readMay 20, 2022

Designed for the Museum of the Sierra

At the start of the 2021–2022 school year, four of my AP US History students assumed that they had been hired to produce a wall exhibit for the Museum of the Sierra, with this exhibit to be entitled The Chinese in the Sierra Nevada from 1848 to 1883.

Below are the names of the five SMHS students who worked on this project:

Sophia An
Esther Lian
Natalie Chuang
Hannah Hamawi
Russell Tsai

The Museum of the Sierra is located in the Sierra National Forest of Fresno County, California. It seeks to preserve the cultural and natural history of the Sierra Nevada through education and curation of historical artifacts and stories.

See below for a step-by-step description of the students’ work.

First, the students researched the topic online

Here are some of the better articles and videos that they found.

Chinese Americans and the Gold Rush Ellen Terrell, Library of Congress, January 2021
California Gold Rush Chinese Miners Get Last Laugh and Gold by Craig MacDonald.” See California, Accessed 6 December 2021.
Ichikawa, Nina F. “Looking for a Gold-Rush Town Named Chinese Camp.” The New York Times, 16 September 2021, Accessed 6 December 2021.
Searching for the Gold Mountain
Chang, Gordon H. “Op-Ed: Remember the Chinese Immigrants who Built America’s first Transcontinental Tailroad.” Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2019, Accessed 6 December 2021.
“Chinese immigration and the Transcontinental railroad.” USCitizenship.info, Accessed December 2021.
Baldassari, Erin. “Stanford professor’s New Book Shines Light on Chinese Railroad Workers.” The Mercury News, 6 May 2019. Accessed 6 December 2021
Dimri, Bipin. “Why Did The Chinese Blast Tunnels in the Sierra Nevada?” Historic Mysteries, 29 June 2021, Accessed 6 December 2021
Fuchs, Chris. “150 years ago, Chinese railroad workers risked their lives in pursuit of the American dream.” NBC News, 24 April 2019, Accessed 6 December 2021.
Kennedy, Lesley. “Building the Transcontinental Railroad: How 20000 Chinese Immigrants Made It Happen.” History.com, 10 May 2019, Accessed 6, December 2021
Reconnecting Roots. The Transcontinental Railroad and the Forgotten Chinese Workers Who Helped Build It. Reconnecting Roots, 27 October 2020. Accessed 6 December 2021. YouTube
The Natural Ice Industry in California, Eugene Itogowa, 1974.
Yosemite Honors National Park’s Early Chinese Laborers
Chinese Labor Helped Fuel Yosemite’s Growth
How a Chinese cook helped establish Yosemite and the National Park Service
Chung, Sue Fawn. “Chinese Lumbermen in Verdi and Surrounding Areas.” USDA Forest Service, June 2003.
Chung, Sue Fawn. “Gordon on Chung, ‘Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West’ | H-Environment.” H-Net, April 2016.
ColorCraft. “10 Tips for Museum Exhibit Design Success — ColorCraft.” ColorCraft.
Laurie, Bridget, and John Powell. “A GUIDE TO EXHIBIT DEVELOPMENT.” Smithsonian Exhibits, Smithsonian Exhibits.
Museum on Main Street. “Exhibition Planning Guide.” Humanities Kansas, Smithsonian.
Richards, Gordon. “Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company.” Truckee-Donner Historical Society, 2017.

Below are two of the better videos the students found, with both of these videos detailing one of the lesser-known stories about the Chinese in the Sierra Nevada from 1848 to 1883.

Then they conducted research beyond the internet

The students reached out to the Truckee-Donner Historical Society to learn more about the role of the Chinese in terms of the Truckee ice harvesting industry of the late 1800s.

Below is the response that the students received.

Thank you for expressing your interest in Truckee-Donner Historical Society and the contributions that the Chinese made to this area.
Your specific question referenced ice harvesting in the area by Chinese immigrants after the Civil War.
We suggest you track this reference source down by author Eugene Itogowa, The Natural Ice Industry in California (1974). While the Historical Society does hold several books and articles about the ice industry in general in our book collection here in Truckee, your best bet would be to see if you can obtain this book reference from your local library as an ILL lend. This Master’s Thesis may very well discuss the topic you are searching for.
The other possibility is a 1984 book America’s Icemen: An Illustrative History of the U.S. Natural Ice Industry 1665–1925 by Joseph C. Jones, Jr. This Icemen book may also be available from your local lending library as an ILL book.
Good luck.
Heidi
Heidi Sproat
Truckee-Donner Historical Society (TDHS)
Webmaster, Image Collection
hsproat@truckeehistory.org

Then they organized their exhibit

Their proposed exhibit will be organized as follows:

The Chinese in America Prior to 1848
The Chinese Miner (1848–1883)
The Chinese Laundry Business Worker (1851–1883)
The Chinese Railroad Worker (1865–1883)
The Chinese Lumbermen (1865–1883)
The Chinese Ice Harvesting Laborer (1868–1883)
The Chinese Tioga Pass Road Builder (1883)
The Chinese in the Sierra Nevada After the Passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943)

Then they produced a video

This 5:23 video provides an overview of their proposed exhibit.

Then they produced a mock-up

This mock was produced digitally, with the mock-up revealing what one of the museum walls might look like if the students’ proposed exhibit were to be actually constructed.

Then they ran out of time

Before heading home for the summer, the students addressed an important close-out question — what would you do if you had more time to work on this project.

In response, the students said that they would:

See Tunnels #6 and #8 for themselves.
Visit the Museum of the Sierra
Visit the Truckee Historical Museum.
Visit the Gold Rush Museum
Visit the California History Museum
Meet with Gordon H. Chang, Stanford history professor and author of Ghosts of Gold Mountain
Meet with Russ Low, physician, book author, and great grandson of Hung Lai Wah (mentioned throughout the book Ghosts of Gold Mountain and on page one in particular)
Meet with Phil Sexton, executive director of the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society,
Meet with ??? executive director of the 1882 Foundation (seeking to facilitate a new National Historic Landmark at Donner Pass)
Meet with Jerry Blackwell, keeper of the Truckee area railroad history
Meet with Lisa See, American writer and novelist
Read Eugene Itogowa’s book, The Natural Ice Industry in California.
Read Gordon Chang’s book, The Ghosts of Gold Mountain
Read Russ Low’s book, The Three Coins
Write a no-more-than-five-page research paper addressing each of their proposed exhibit’s seven topics; then turn each paper into a 2–4 minute video designed for viewing on one of their exhibit walls.
Produce several other mock-ups.
Pitch their proposed exhibit to a real-world audience, with that audience hopefully consisting of one or more representatives of the Museum of the Sierra. Maybe also one or more representatives of the California History Museum (located in Sacramento.)

Sidenote #1

While working on this project, the students received the below from Hannah Fong, the SMHS Independent Study Teacher.

Wow. The work you are doing on this project is so cool. It all reminds me of a wall mural at the Westfield Santa Anita Mall. Have you seen it? It was part of the 2021 Anti-Asian Hate campaign and looks like this.

Sidenote #2

The students also received the below from the Truckee-Donner Historical Society in response to a question asking “what % of the Truckee population of the late 1800s was Chinese?”

Please see the attached compilation of Chinese in the GREATER Truckee area based on census records. This was compiled by our former TDHS President, Chaun Mortier. Please keep in mind the areas the census covered. Smaller camps between Donner Summit and Stateline were included in the figures, not just Truckee.

Before reaching out, the students had learned, from various sources, that:

In 1869, when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, about 1,400 now out-of-work Chinese laborers traveled to Truckee to seek new jobs.
Within a period of a few months, one third of Truckee’s population was Chinese. The Chinatown there was the second only to San Francisco in its size.
By 1885, the white people of the Truckee community had cultivated intense disdain and animosity toward the Chinese immigrants. The anti-Chinese sentiment led to the driving of m most of the Chinese completely out of the area, a process that was termed the Truckee Method.
On Feb. 10, 1886, Truckee’s first newspaper, the Truckee Republican , published this: “We are in favor of the exclusion of the Chinese from the Pacific Coast, and believe that the present movement is the beginning of the end. We think that every man and woman should use their influence to help on the good work.”
In June of 1886, afire scoured Truckee’s Chinatown, driving out the last remaining Chinese in the Truckee region
Seven decades later, according to the 2017 United States Census Bureau, the Chinese population in Truckee is less than 1 percent.

Sidenote #3

This is from the Truckee-Donner Historical Society (TDHS).

Once you get a chance to go through the census compilation we provided you that Chaun Mortier assembled, and note that the census entries are from ALL over the small camps around the greater Meadow Lake Township area, we think this might help you to understand the population spread better.
Secondly, if you have citations to a primary source about a significant contribution of the Chinese to the Ice Industry, or can provide us with some specific information to this effect, please share.
The Truckee-Donner Historical Society is the fortunate recipient of Tom Macaulay’s ice collection. (Mr. Macaulay, “Reno Iceman”, was a renowned researcher of area ice production.) Significant contributions of Chinese in the lumbering/charcoal production/firewood business is well documented, and we specifically note this in our Chinese display at our Museum of Truckee History. However, we have not seen such information about the Chinese involvement in ice production, either as laborers or support staff (cooks, household, laundry), or in other capacities. That said, however, we just haven’t seen documentation but of course are open to the idea of further research.
As we review Mr. Macaulay’s extensive collection, we will keep our eyes out for any such reference. If you or your students find support for this, please do let us know. There may have been a few Chinese involved in the ice production business, but the majority were involved in the lumbering/charcoal/firewood business.
Regards.
Heidi Sproat
Truckee-Donner Historical Society (TDHS)

Sidenote #4

Below is a photograph entitled California Railroad. The photo shows “a Chinese laborer coming from the East Portal, Tunnel №8 in California during the construction of the railroad.” Photograph by Carleton Watkins, c.1865.

And now a student-recreation of this photograph, with this painting created in 2022 by Russel Tsai and Esther Lian.

Hung Wah Outside Summit Tunnel #8 (8x8, oil painting)

Sidenote #6

Work on the project will continue this summer with my six-week, Monday-Friday summer school US History class serving as “summer interns” for Sophia, Hannah, et. all. I also plan to ask the students in my 2021–2022 APUSH class to take in the role of interns.

These interns will be invited to move the proposed museum exhibit further down the line. Above all else, this will call on them to research and write about several all-important “side-topics.”

Top Tier Tasks

Write a research paper (traditional or modern, long or short, in-house, Concord Review, or for the internet)
Meet with and learn from an expert
Read a book
Visit/tour/see for yourself
Produce a work of art (painting, song, poem, etc)
Produce a mock-up
Produce a video (TED-Ed, Reading Through History, Tom Richey, whiteboard animated, stop-gap animated, etc.)
Engage in civic action (take a stand, become a force for change)
Produce a timeline

Books to Read

Eugene M. Itogawa’s Book, Natural Ice Industry in California
Joseph C. Jones’ book, America’s Iceman
Gordon Chang’s book, Ghosts of Gold Mountain
Lawrence Yep’s book, The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung
Mae M. Ngai’’s book, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics
Gene Luen Yang’s book, American Born Chinese
Erika Lee’s book At America’s Gate, Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882, 1943
Sue Fawn Chung’s book In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West
C Pam Zhang’s book, How Much of These Hills Is Gold
Robert Kelle’s book, Battling the Inland Sea

Artwork to Produce

A painting? (Hung Wah contemplating his future in the days before the 1869 Golden Spike Ceremony)
Another painting (Unknown Chinese Gold Miner contemplating his future in 1855 as surface gold has disappeared and individual prospecting has come to an end.)
A work of historical fiction (chapter of a book entitled Hung Wah?)
A song
A poem

Click here after January 1, 2023, for an update.