Hi all! It’s been a busy year and I have not had a chance to update everyone on last summer’s archaeological fieldwork in Evanston Chinatown and Rock Springs Chinatown. Photos from the digs can be found in the links below:
- Evanston Chinatown Dig Summer 2024 – Part 1
- Evanston Chinatown Dig Summer 2024 – Part 2
- Rock Springs Chinatown Dig Summer 2024
At the Evanston Chinatown, the field crew consisted of myself, Dr. Dudley Gardner, Paul Hoornbeek, George Matthes ’25, Yurie Okumura ’25; Angela Christensen, Ricky Leo and Peter Lau provided help as well. We were visited by photographer Niki Chan and many locals in the community stopped by to chat with us, including Mary Walberg, curator from the Uinta County Museum, which is next door to our dig. In May 2024, the museum had just finished renovations on the reconstructed Chinese temple. Many of the locals were well-acquainted with the history or with previous archaeological digs there, which is not surprising as the 2024 field season marked three decades of archaeological research at this site!
After two weeks, we traveled over 100 miles eastward to work at the Rock Springs Chinatown. The field crew consisted of myself, Dr. Dudley Gardner, Paul Hoornbeek, George Matthes ’25, Yurie Okumura ’25, and Ricky Leo who was born in Rock Springs and is a Chinese American descendant of the area’s late 19th century coal miners and early 20th century restaurateurs. Visitors to the dig included Grace Leo–Ricky’s wife and someone who grew up in Rock Springs– and Jennifer Messer from the Rock Springs Historical Museum. In addition, we had Ash and Colleen generously bring us treats and assisted in screening for artifacts; Rosa and her partner helped backfill on the final day of fieldwork.
We capped off the dig with a visit to the Rock Springs Cemetery which has a Chinese section that includes many Chinese restaurateurs well-known in Rock Springs, including Grace and Ricky ’s relatives. The Leo 廖 clan made up a large portion of the Rock Springs Chinese community in the past and present.
Dudley and Jennifer have been organizing and fundraising for the REQUIEM statue to commemorate the 1885 Chinese Massacre, when a white mob killed dozens of Chinese migrants and burned down Rock Springs Chinatown (more on this in the next paragraph). The statue will be unveiled on International Day on July 12; we excavated the area that will be the statue’s footprint as part of our 2024 dig. The artist asked Ricky to be a model for the statue, and Grace and Ricky are organizing a 140th commemoration of the massacre Aug. 28 – Sept. 2: https://www.rockspringscommemoration.org/home
We also had media converge on the Evanston and Rock Springs Chinatown excavations, both locally and nationally.
Michael Luo of The New Yorker had an excerpt of his new book published in the March, 2025 issue; it focused on the history of the 1885 Chinese massacre, and he reported on our archaeological research and goal of tracking down descendants: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/10/when-an-american-town-massacred-its-chinese-immigrants
I provided a Feet in 2 Worlds reporter with contact information for descendants of the Rock Springs Chinatown for their story. On the right is a Zoom call from 2023 that I organized with the grand & great-grand children of Leo Pack Jung (herbalist/merchant), Leo Chan Kong (herbalist/merchant), and Leo Fong (Grand Cafe). Interviews with our descendant collaborators are in the story “The Ghosts of Rock Springs”: https://www.fi2w.org/the-ghosts-of-rock-springs/
Lastly, we have some departing and arriving Grinnell College research assistant news. George Matthes and Evan Albaugh, who have been working in my archaeology lab over the last 2.5 years, have graduated from college! George plans to continue working as archaeologist, and Evan in museums. Although irreplaceable, I have four new students– Jorge Salinas ’26, Julia Ghorai ’27, Luis Lopez ’27, and Avajane Lei ’28–who will work with me this summer on cataloging artifacts from both Wyoming Chinatowns. They will also travel with me to continue excavations at the Rock Springs Chinatown in July. Watch out for blog posts from them!
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