Chinese Miners in Oregon

Dredges & Doodlebugs

The Sumpter Dredge in Sumpter brought an industrial scale to mining and left miles of tailings as waste. (Oregon State Archives, 2012) Get a high resolution copy of this image from the Oregon Scenic Images Collection.

While Chinese miners often worked abandoned claims on a small scale, another part of Oregon’s gold industry saw the growth of mechanization. Gold dredges scooped tons upon tons of gravel, sand, and mud from water sources with mechanical buckets. They screened out unwanted materials, taking any gold and leaving behind gravel in piles called “tailings.” Dredges required a great deal of water to operate. They were essentially landlocked boats that sat in a self-made pond that traveled with them as they scooped.

This 1938 photo shows a typical waste area, or tailings, from hydraulic dredge mining operations in Grant County. (Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society) Enlarge Image

They appeared in the early 1900s, and some still lie abandoned in ponds across Oregon. The smaller but equally devastating “doodlebug” used a drag-line from dry land to feed a floating washing plant. It worked small deposits for operations that could not secure loans for a full-sized dredge.

2 men with buckets and a rock sifter work near a stream. 2 girls and 1 boy look on. — Chinese miners in the late 1800s. (Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society) **Enlarge Image**

Chinese immigrants have a long history of mining gold in Oregon. The earliest groups worked placer digs around Jacksonville which boasts the first Oregon Chinatown, a claim that is disputed by Baker City. Chinatown populations could swell many times over in winter, when miners left bad-weather mountain camps. In fact, Oregon had a significant 19th century Chinese population. In 1870 Grant County, for instance, nearly half the population was Chinese. Immigrants from China also made up almost 70% of all miners in the county and Chinese workers operated four out of every five placer mines in the region.

Many of these immigrants came from mining regions in China’s Guangdong Province. There, Chinese mine companies trained skilled workers who then sailed to the United States. Many of these laborers were educated and came from prosperous families in south China. Most worked for companies which also owned stores, gambling halls, laundries, restaurants, and hotels. Chinese mining companies rarely paid wages like American businesses. Instead, they paid out shares of the profits based on a worker’s contributions and expertise. Worker earnings were most often sent back to China.

Wood and stone building that served as trading post. Two stories with stairs on the outside that lead to top level. — The Kam Wah Chung Museum in John Day. The site is based in a rustic building that was constructed as a trading post in 1876. Here Chinese herbal doctor Ing Hay administered traditional Chinese remedies to the Chinese gold-mine workers, pioneers, and others from a wide area. (Oregon State Archives, 2019) Get a high resolution of this image and others in the Oregon Scenic Images Collection.

Americans often forced Chinese miners into reworking claims abandoned by white prospectors. As the 1900s approached, harsh Asian exclusion policies meant fewer Chinese immigrants worked claims. By 1890 only 6% of Grant County’s population was Chinese. At this time gold mining was also shifting to hard-rock mining, and Chinese companies could not meet the necessary startup costs. By 1902, the era of Chinese gold mining in Oregon was over. Immigrant workers could never break the racist barriers that prevented them from working alongside white American miners. The Chinese Exclusion Act became permanent that same year, ending all legal immigration from China.

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