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The first Chinatown in Riverside was in the downtown area, centered on Ninth Street. It included laundries, small restaurants, and more. A fire destroyed most of its structures and led to the establishment of a second Chinatown

Photographed by Adam Margolis, February 16, 2025

2. Welcome Marker

in 1885 in the Tequesquite Arroyo, in the shadow of Mt. Rubidoux on the outskirts of the city. This small community had as many as four hundred Chinese residents at some points. Many of them were from Gom-Benn, a village in the Toishan region of southern China; many had the family name Wong. Chinatown was sometime referred to as "Little Gom-Benn."

Another fire destroyed this Chinatown in 1893 but it was again rebuilt, featuring brick and wooden buildings, including a small temple. It included shops, a butcher, laundries, and residences, and it provided a number of services for migrant Chinese laborers. By the 1930s, it was in decline due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and dwindling numbers of Chinese in the area.

Riverside's Chinatown site is a significant cultural reminder of the less exemplary aspects of its social history. The relocation of Riverside's Chinese from the

Photographed by Adam Margolis, February 16, 2025

3. Welcome Marker

city's downtown business district to the Tequesquite Arroyo occurred not only because land values were soaring in the downtown area, but because of anti-Chinese sentiment among Anglo merchants and unemployed whites. Anti-Chinese activities flared up again in the recession and depression years of 1889 and 1893, and on November 29, 1896 night riders swept into a packinghouse in Casa Blanca and brutally assaulted seven Chinese workers. In general, however, anti-Chinese sentiment and examples of brutality toward the immigrants were relatively rare in Riverside as compared with many other California communities. Raven's 1894-85 social history study of Riverside's Chinatown in relationship to the Anglo community and to orange growers in particular indicates that close personal relationships did develop between Euroamericans and the immigrants, often clouded by ambiguous feelings that ranged from stereotyping Chinese to romanticizing them. Seventeen volumes of newspaper clippings containing more than 2,000 articles on Riverside's Chinese community from 1876 to the 1940's were compiled by local historian Harry Lawton during the Great Basin

Photographed by Adam Margolis, February 16, 2025

4. Welcome Marker

Foundation archaeological project. These and hundreds of other documents, articles, interviews, and reminiscences, all of which are now stored in the Tomas Rivera Library, offer a fertile field for continuing research on the social history of Riverside's Chinatown. Currently, a graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Riverside, Mrs. Pat Hanrahan, is computerizing much of this material and correlating it with Chinese census data for Riverside. Another UCR graduate student, Paul Wormser of the Department of History, has also embarked on a study of Chinese death records in Riverside and other communities of the citrus belt and is correlating it with burials in regional cemeteries.

Chinatown Site (Brockton Avenue at Tequesquite Avenue) Riverside’s Chinese community settled here in 1885 and, one hundred years later, a major archeological investigation of the pioneer settlement was conducted. The last of the Chinatown buildings was demolished in 1978.

(Submitted on June 25, 2026, by Volt

National Register of Historic Places, 1990

5. Historic Chinatown

Craft of Riverside, California.)

National Register of Historic Places, 1990

6. Historic Chinatown

National Register of Historic Places, 1990

7. Historic Chinatown