Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation
P.O. Box 7024
Tacoma, WA 98406-0024
info@crpftacoma.org

Many Chinese came to this area in the 1870s to build the Northern Pacific Railroad line from Kalama to Tacoma. An economic depression in the 1880s fueled anti-immigrant feelings. Racial bigotry coupled with job fears prompted Tacomans to devise a way of ridding the community of its immigrant workers.

The Chinese were ordered to leave the city by November 1, 1885. Four hundred Chinese fled their homes and businesses, and Little Hong Kong, the fishing village on Maury Island, completely vanished.

About 200 Chinese remained on the morning of November 3. Several hundred men, led by the mayor and other city officials, evicted the Chinese from their homes, corralled them at 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, marched them to the railway station at Lakeview, and forced them aboard the morning train to Portland, Oregon. The next day two Chinese settlements were burned to the ground.  Chinese were actively discouraged from settling in Tacoma until the 1920s. What became known at "The Tacoma Method" was frightfully successful and accounts for why our city has no Chinatown today.

Continue to The Reconciliation Process Has Begun.

Image Credit: Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma