Petaluma's Chinatown Archives - Petaluma Historian

The History of Center Park

*Center Park, 1930 (photo Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)*

The history of Petaluma’s Center Park stretches back to the original founding of Petaluma. Located on Petaluma Boulevard between Western Avenue and B Street, the pocket park was created by Columbus Tustin, whose development, Tustin’s Addition, followed a year after George H. Keller founded the town in 1852.^[1]

Keller’s original street grid was laid out parallel to the Petaluma River, with Main Street ending just south of Western Avenue, where the river took a bend toward the east (today’s Turning Basin). The next year, Tustin’s Addition was created abutting Keller’s grid at that bend in the river. Extending from A to F streets and First to Eighth streets, it also ran parallel to the river in its layout, but at a different angle than Keller’s.

*Keller’s founding development in green (Brewster’s Survey), beside Tustin’s Addition in yellow, on 1877 Thos. Thompson map (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)*

The juncture where the two grids met created an angle of roughly 140 degrees. In the case of where Keller’s Main Street met Tustin’s Third Street, Tustin created an open rectangular space in the street between the juncture and B Street. That block between Western Avenue and B Street soon became known as Lower Main Street. (In 1958, Main and Third streets were combined into Petaluma Boulevard North and South).^[2]

*Arrow pointing to space created by Tustin at Main and Third Streets (1865 Jas. T. Stratton map, Petlauma Historical Museum & Library)*

Throughout the 1860s, the rectangular space on Lower Main Street served as a makeshift parking lot for farmers with horse-drawn wagons bringing their goods to town. In 1871, the city’s board of trustees (predecessors to today’s city council) allowed merchants in the area to install hitching posts and a horse trough with a well in the space, which came to be called Lower Main Street Plaza.^[3]

A decade later the city removed the hitching posts and horse trough, reportedly to build a shed for sheltering horses from sun and rain. Instead, the site reverted to its former makeshift parking lot until 1886, when members of the city’s Board of Trustees personally funded the installation of new hitching posts, a water trough, cobblestone paving, and shade trees. ^[4]

*Lower Main Street Plaza, c. 1892 (Sonoma County Library)*

These improvements coincided with a wave of new commercial development along Lower Main Street, beginning in 1882 with the construction of the Masonic Building at the corner of Main Street and Western Avenue.^[5]

At the time, Lower Main Street was the commercial hub of Petaluma’s German and Chinese immigrant populations. The German district extended along the west side of the block from Western Avenue to the plaza. German merchants owned and operated two hotels, the Union and the Cosmopolitan, as well as the Centennial Building which housed a horse stable, shops, and the Druid’s Lodge, home to gatherings of the German community (today’s Lan Mart Building).^[6]

*Cosmopolitan Hotel and Centennial Building to its right, c. 1900 (courtesy of Dan Brown Collection)*

The rest of Lower Main Street was the heart of Petaluma’s Chinatown, which extended from Western Avenue down Main and Third streets to D Street. Lower Main Street Plaza was surrounded by both Chinese dwellings and businesses, including laundries, groceries, tobacco shops, boarding houses, and restaurants. On the east side of the block, there were interspersed with grain and produce warehouses.^[7]

In 1886, the Chinese were temporarily driven from Petaluma during a surge in anti-Chinese sentiment in Sonoma County. During their absence, local capitalist John A. McNear replaced a group of their dwellings he owned on the block with the first McNear Building. The commercial gentrification of Lower Main Street soon followed, pushing the Chinese community further south along Third Street to between B and D streets.^[8]

*John A. McNear with horse and carriage outside new McNear Building, 1886 (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)*

During the 1890s, Lower Main Street Plaza became a popular gathering place for public events. With the street to the west side of the plaza roped off, the site hosted political orators, concerts, parade stands, National Guard drills, street vendors, estate auctions, horse sales, and the city’s Fourth of July fireworks.^[9]

*Lower Main Street Plaza, c. 1908 (Sonoma County Library)*

In 1920, with automobiles having replaced horse-drawn wagons and carriages in town, Petaluma’s city council voted to replace Lower Main Street Plaza with additional parking spaces for surrounding merchants. Outraged residents petitioned against the destruction of the plaza, calling instead for its beautification as a gateway to the downtown for auto tourists. The city council quickly reversed their decision, and set about beautifying the plaza with grass and plantings.^[10]

This work effort coincided with the efforts of the newly-formed Redwood Highway Association. Seeking to direct the new wave of auto tourists to what remained of California’s old-growth redwood groves, the association promoted rechristening the thoroughfare between Sausalito and the Oregon border as a scenic route called the Redwood Highway.^[11]In 1921, the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce made Petaluma the first city in Sonoma County to officially designate its Main Street as part of the Redwood Highway.^[12]

*Map of the proposed Redwood Highway, 1921 (San Francisco Examiner)*

During Petaluma’s Egg Day Celebration in 1921, the newly-beautified Lower Main Street Plaza became the setting for a chicken rodeo, an egg rolling contest, a game of egg baseball, and an egg laying display. Two of the city’s banks sponsored a contest to rename the plaza. Out of 200 submissions, “Mainway”—a combination of Main Street and highway—was chosen as the winner. The name “Center Park,” signifying the plaza’s location between Walnut Park and Hill Plaza Park (today’s Penry Park), came in third.^[13]

Renaming of the plaza was postponed until 1925, when, thanks to the lobbying of Park Commissioner Hiram “Hoppy” Hopkins, Center Park was chosen as the plaza’s new name.^[14]

*Sonoma-Marin Fair pre-breakfast, Center Park, 1950s (Petlauma Historical Museum & Library)*

Over the past 100 years, Center Park has served many functions as a community hub, including serving for many decades as the focus of the city’s annual holiday festivities with bands, choirs, tree lightings, and the arrival of Santa Claus. In 1930, the large Christmas tree the city had annually erected in the park was replaced with a living Norway spruce courtesy of the Petaluma Garden Club. By 1933, there were two living trees in the park.^[15]Over the years, redwoods were added to the park, until their numbers were reduced to just three trees in 1964 to allow more room for upward growth.^[16]

*Center Park with planted redwood trees, 1955 (Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)*

In 1985, Hospice of Petaluma launched an annual holiday tradition at the park called “light up a life.” In exchange for a donation, one could dedicate one bulb on the string of lights draped around a redwood tree in the park to the memory of someone deceased. In 2017, the event was moved to Walnut Park.^[17]

In 1976, the city council approved erecting a facsimile of the El Camino Real Bell in Center Park. One of more than 585 such bells displayed along California’s mission trail from San Diego to Sonoma, it was created in the early 1900s to promote auto tourism and visitation of the missions. Petaluma obtained their bell from the Redwood Empire Association, who had stored it for decades. Although Petaluma was not on the mission trail, the city laid claim to the bell on the grounds that Padre Jose Altamira had passed through the Petaluma area while searching for a suitable location for the mission in Sonoma.^[18]

Mayor *Helen Putnam, right, unveiling of the El Camino Real Bell, 1977 (Sonoma County Library)*

Over the years, Center Park has also been the topic of proposed repurposing. In 1957, Petaluma’s Chamber of Commerce petitioned the city to build their new headquarters on the park. Legal challenges and opposition from merchants on the west side of the park defeated the effort.^[19]

*Drawing of proposed Chamber of Commerce Building in Center Park, 1957 (Petaluma Argus Courier)*

In 1984, four years after investing in a major facelift to the park, the city council approved making Center Park a memorial site to honor former mayor Helen Putnam, who died that year. They set aside $85,000 ($257,000 in today’s currency) for a dome fountain, stone seating, additional walkways, permanent lighting, and a memorial plaque. The next year, the city decided instead to purchase the empty lot on Petaluma Boulevard at the end of Golden Concourse to create the memorial site known as Putnam Plaza.^[20]

*Drawing of proposed Helen Putnam memorial at Center Park, 1984 (Petlauma Argus-Courier)*

Today, Center Park remains a landmark pocket park in the city, largely dominated by three towering redwood trees, all of which began showing signs of sickness and distress in the 2010s, resulting in the removal and replacement of the worst afflicted, the redwood at the north end. The park still has hitching posts, only now for bicycles.^[21]

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sonoma County Deed Records, show two grants in 1853 from Columbus Tustin, one to Edward S, Jones, May 16, 1853, and the other to Fred Starkey, August 12, 1853, indicating that he was selling lots.

[2] The boundaries of Tustin’s Addition and Keller development, entitled Brewster’s Survey, are specified in Thos. H. Thompson’s Map of Sonoma County, 1877, Sonoma County Library; “Supervisors Vote to Change Name of Old U.S. 101,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 9, 1958.

[3] “Board of Trustees,” Petaluma Argus, August 19, 1871.

[4] “Will Be Restored,” Petaluma Argus, December 2, 1881; “Should Be Replaced,” Petaluma Courier, January 4, 1882; “Hitching Posts,” Petaluma Courier, January 7, 1885; “Improvement,” Petaluma Argus, January 28, 1886; “Good,” Petaluma Courier, June 1, 1887; “About Streets,” Petaluma Courier, July 6, 1887; “Humane Society Holds a Meeting,” Petaluma Argus, October 4, 1905; “Planted New Trees on Main Street,” Petaluma Argus, March 12, 1909.

[5] Dedication of Masonic Temple,” Petaluma Argus, April 21, 1882.

[6] Ad for Pfau’s purchase of livery, Petaluma Argus, April 13, 1865; Ad, Petaluma Argus, October 1873; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, July 23, 1875; “Pfau’s Centennial Building,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1876 “Centennial Headquarters,” Petaluma Argus, July 14, 1876; Ad for Centennial Saloon and Music Hall,” Petaluma Courier, March 7, 1878; Ad for Eureka horse, Petaluma Courier, May 31, 1877; Ad, Petaluma Courier, March 24, 1880; “The Druids,” Petaluma Courier, December 22, 1880; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 143.

[7] Chinese stores and shanties are listed in the 1883 Sanborn map of Petaluma extending along Western Avenue from Kentucky to Main Street, and from there down Main and Third streets to D Street, as well as along B Street from Main Street to Fourth Street.

[8] “A Terrible Crime,” Petaluma Courier, January 27, 1886; “Ah Ti, the Murderer,” Petaluma Argus, January 30, 1886; Anti-Coolie Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, February 6, 1886; “Going Below,” Petaluma Argus, February 13, 1866; “Sebastopol Anti-Chinese League,” Sonoma Democrat, February 27, 1886; “Blew Them Up,” Petaluma Argus, March 10, 1886; Chinatown fires (no headline) Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1887; “An Additional Story,” Petaluma Argus, April 3, 1886; Jeff Elliot examines holes in the accusations against the Wickersham’s cook: “The Wickersham Murders,” “Who Killed the Wickershams,” Santarosahistory.com, http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2017/05/the-wickersham-murders/.

[9] “Town Topics,” Petaluma Courier, May 21, 1893; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, October 8, 1895; “Independent Foresters,” Petaluma Courier, October 9, 1896; “Salvation Meeting,” Petaluma Courier, November 13, 1896; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, July 19, 1897; “Socialist Speaker,” Petaluma Courier, October 12, 1897; “The Day,” Petaluma Courier, July 3, 1901; “The Day Fireworks,” Petaluma Courier, July 5, 1902; “Tonight’s Band Concert,” Petaluma Courier, July 5, 1902; “Local Notes, Petaluma Argus, May 23, 1903; “City Trustees,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1904; “Congressman D.E. McKinlay,” Petaluma Argus, August 6, 1910; “Opening Band Concert,” Petaluma Courier, May 13, 1915; “G.W. Hoyle Will Be Speaker at Saturday’s Demonstration,” Petaluma Argus, April 15, 1918; “Band Concert Here Tonight,” Petaluma Argus, August 22, 1925; “Armistice Day Parade,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 8, 1930; “1934 Parade of Witches,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 17, 1934.

[10] “Council Votes Parking Place on Lower Main,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1920; “Beautify Main Street,” Petaluma Courier, October 20, 1920; “The Lower Main Street Park Will Remain as Originally Planned,” Petaluma Argus, November 2, 1920.

[11] The seven counties officially formed the North of Bay Counties Association to promote the highway, of which the Redwood Highway Association appears to have been a subsidiary, referenced as early as February 1922; “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; “Great North of Bay Development Program Outlined at S.R. Session,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 6, 1921; “North of Bay Association is Formed,” Weekly Calistogan, November 18, 1921; “Redwood Highway to Traverse Scenic Wonderland,” Cloverdale Reveille, January 27, 1922; “Petaluma C. of C. Urge Highway Completion,” Petaluma Courier, February 19, 1922; Peter J. Blodgett, “How Americans Fell in Love With Taking Road Trips,” Time magazine, August 15, 2015. https://time.com/3998949/road-trip-history/

[12] “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; “C.C. Endorses Naming of State Highway and Boulevard Road District,” Petaluma Courier, September 9, 1921; “Santa Rosa Has Prominent Place on Map of Route of U.S. Highway,” Santa Rosa Republican, February 20, 1926.

[13] “Official Program for the Great Egg Day Celebration,” Petaluma Argus, April 19, 1921; “Prize Winners For Park Name,” Petaluma Argus, July 1, 1921; “Park Name is Debated by Council,” Petaluma Argus, July 6, 1921; “City Council Takes First Steps for Street Improvements and Repairs,” Petaluma Argus, July 19, 1921; “City Council Staged Forum on City Rezoning and the Type of Street Pavement to Be Used on Three Thoroughfares,” Petaluma Argus, August 4, 1925.

[14] “Hiram Hopkins Rounds Out 50 Years at G.P. McNears,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 1, 1951.

[15] “News Notes,” Petaluma Argus, December 13, 1916; “Living Yuletide Tree Planted,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 10, 1930; Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 8, 1930; “Santa Claus Will Arrive Here Tonight for the Big Christmas Festival,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 2, 1933; “Grand Xmas Opening Here to Take Place Tonight; Band Concert at Center Park,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 3, 1938; “Yuletide Street Decorations Dedication Here Tonight,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 30, 1946.

[16] “McDowell Park Work Urged by Recreation Unit,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 18, 1963.

[17] “Hospice of Petaluma Plans Tree Lighting Campaign,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 20, 1985; “Out and About in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 30, 2017.

[18] “Petaluma May Soon Receive El Camino Real Mission Bell,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1976; “Council Rejects Zoning for Apartment Complex,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 17, 1976; “Bell Marks Visit by Mission Priests,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 2, 1977.

[19] “Chamber May Build an Office,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 23, 1957; “Chamber Members Favor Center Park Site, 3 to 1,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 23, 1957; “C of C Office Move Runs into Opposition,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 8, 1957.

[20] “Center Park Facelift,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 30, 1980; “Center Park at Tribute to Helen Putnam,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 20, 1984; “Reconsider Tribute to Putnam,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 21, 1985; “New Location for Putnam Tribute,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 13, 1985; “Downtown Lot Could Become Park,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 22, 1985.

[21] “Iconic Redwood Cutdown,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 17, 2013.

In the Shadow of Gold Mountain

PETALUMA’S EARLY CHINATOWN

Chinese butcher and grocery, San Francisco, ca. 1885 (photo Universal Archives/Getty Images)

On January 17, 1866, John McNear’s wife Clara died from complications related to the birth of the couple’s fifth child.^[1]Rather than bury her at Petaluma’s public graveyard in Oak Park, McNear developed his own cemetery on forty acres at the edge of town. He called it Cypress Hill. Reverend William C. Pond, the new Congregational minister in town, officiated over Clara’s burial. In gratitude, McNear gifted him Cypress Hill’s first commercial burial plot.^[2]

But death wasn’t all the two men bonded over. There was also “the Chinese question.”

For capitalists like McNear, the Chinese were quiet, diligent laborers, willing to work at wages below those of whites. For Protestant evangelists like Pond, they were prospective converts to send back to China as missionaries in spreading Christianity.

Two years after Clara’s death, lobbyists of commerce and conversion persuaded the U.S. to sign the Burlingame Treaty with China. In addition to opening up new trade opportunities, the treaty lifted restrictions on Chinese immigration, ensuring a steady flow of cheap labor to the U.S, and allowed Christian missionaries to practice in China.[3]

*Chinese Bottling Wine at Buena Vista Winery, Sonoma (photo Eadweard Muybridge, California State Library)*

By 1870, there were nearly 500 Chinese immigrants living in Sonoma County. Their numbers would double over the next decade.^[4]They worked in vineyards, on creek rechanneling and levee crews along the Petaluma River, at wineries, as railroad workers, lumberjacks, quarry miners, farm laborers, and builders of stone fences before the arrival of barbed wire.^[5] A quarter of them lived in Petaluma, primarily in Chinatown, an ethnic enclave extending along today’s Petaluma Boulevard from Western Avenue to D Street.^[6]

Relegated to shanties as living quarters, they operated laundries, groceries, tobacco shops, boarding houses, and restaurants—including one specializing in abalone porterhouse steaks. Dr. Shing Kee operated an herbal medical practice at B and Main streets, that doubled as a laborer hiring company. A handful of Chinese also worked as servants and cooks for wealthy white households.^[7]

*Chung, house servant of T. B and Caroline Hood, Santa Rosa, 1900 (photo Sonoma County Library)*

Excluded from local fraternities, they formed their own Freemasons Lodge. For worship and meditation, they established a Joss House, or Taoist-Buddhist temple, which also served as a community center, especially during Chinese New Year.^[8]

*Joss House temple in San Francisco, 1887 (photo Bancroft Library)*

The Chinese were almost exclusively men, women largely precluded by custom and immigration law. Of the 3,536 Chinese women living in California in 1870, 60% were victims of sex traffickers, smuggled into the country by a crime network known as the Tong, whose reach extended to Petaluma, where they operated brothels, gambling houses, and opium dens for Chinese and whites.^[9]

Most Chinese emigrated to “Gold Mountain”—as they called California—from South China’s Guangtong Province, a region wracked by war, civil unrest, floods, famines, and drought. Petaluma’s other early immigrant groups—the Irish, Swiss Italians, and Germans—who made up a third of the city’s population, fled their own homelands under similar conditions.^[10]

Like them, the Chinese had their own benevolent association, the Six Companies, which fronted their passage to California, aided them in sickness, and shipped their bones back to China for burial.^[11]

*Headquarters of the Chinese Six Companies in San Francisco (photo Bancroft Library)*

As Sonoma County burst from encampments into a bustling economy, the Chinese proved indispensable in building railroads, reclaiming wetland areas, and developing agriculture. Most carved out meager livings, sending a share of their earnings back home to struggling family members.^[12] But unlike European immigrants, who were able to gradually assimilate into Anglo-American culture, the Chinese found themselves perennially marked as foreign, set apart by their features, skin color, exotic dress, and customs.

Prohibited from owning property, denied naturalization and legal protections, they were mislabeled “coolies”—a Hindi term from the British empire for indentured or slave labor—and consigned to the shadow of Gold Mountain as second-class citizens.^[13]

Rev. William C. Pond (photo public domain)

*John A. McNear (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)*

McNear was one of the largest employers of Chinese in the area. Along with his banking and real estate concerns, his primary business was selling grain. He made a fortune during the state’s wheat boom, exporting grain overseas. He also employed hundreds of Chinese at San Pedro Point in Marin County, where he operated a 2,500-acre cattle ranch, brickyard, quarry, and shrimping business.^[14]

*Chinese shrimpers at San Pedro Point (photo Friends of China Camp*)

McNear found a ready ally in Reverend Pond, a fellow New Englander, over the “Chinese question.” Pond left the Petaluma parish after three years to serve as pastor of San Francisco’s Third Congregational Church. Employing a Protestant strategy known as “baiting the Gospel hook with the English alphabet,” he started a night school for the “heathen” Chinese.

After conservative parishioners balked at admitting Chinese converts, Pond established his own parish, the Bethany Congregational Church. He also created the California Chinese Mission, which opened dozens of Chinese Mission Schools across California, including one in Petaluma’s Chinatown in 1876.^[15]

*Students at Congregational Chinese Mission School, Los Angeles, 1880s (photo Chinese Historical Society of Southern California)*

That same year, California was hit with the full brunt of a national recession. Triggered in 1873 by overspeculation in railroads and a drop in European demand for U.S. farm goods, it brought with it farm foreclosures and high unemployment.^[16]

In the fall of 1877, labor protestors in San Francisco formed the Workingmen’s Party. Led by a charismatic young Irish immigrant named Denis Kearney, they called for better pay, an eight-hour work day, regulation of banks and railroads, high taxation of the rich, and help for the poor. Denouncing the employment of low-paid Chinese immigrants by rich capitalists, they launched a Chinese labor boycott, adopting as their rallying cry “the Chinese must go.”^[17]

*Cover of the San Francisco Wasp magazine, December 8, 1877* *(Bancroft Library)*

Within weeks, Anti-Chinese Clubs sprang up throughout California, including in Petaluma, where membership quickly exceeded 300. In the spring of 1878, Kearney and his lieutenants staged a mass rally at Petaluma’s Main Street Plaza (today’s Penry Park) to address local party members and discontented members of the Petaluma Grange.^[18]

*Illustration of 1874 Grange meeting in a schoolhouse (Joseph E. Beale, Pixels.com)*

Formed in 1873 to provide social and intellectual benefits to the local farming community, the Grange aligned with the Workingmen to protest “the wheat-bag trust” of exploitative middlemen—wheat brokers, shipping companies, and bankers—who forced them to dispose of their crops at little or no profit, while charging them interest rates of between 12% and 20%. They called out McNear to be “subjected to the inquisitorial thumbscrews.”^[19]

In the fall of 1878, California voters approved a proposal to hold a convention to update California’s state constitution. After capturing a majority of the convention delegates, the Workingmen’s Party pushed for more stringent federal and state laws against the Chinese, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which placed a ten-year prohibition on the immigration of Chinese laborers.^[20]

*Illustration in the San Francisco Wasp magazine, May 11, 1878, lampooning whites who claim to be anti-Chinese but use their services* *(Bancroft Library)*

Far from appeasing the fanatics, the new restrictions prompted them to expel the remaining Chinese from the U.S., unleashing more hostilities against Chinese communities.^[21] In 1883, an arsonist in Petaluma torched Wah Lee’s laundry at the corner of Western Avenue and Kentucky Street. Before it could be rebuilt, the city banned laundries—new and existing—from its “fire limits” downtown, a zone extending from the river to Kentucky and Fourth streets, and from B Street to Washington Street.^[22]

*1883 Sanborn map of Chinese businesses (in green) at Western Avenue and Petaluma Boulevard (then Main Street)*

Tensions reached a fevered pitch in 1886, following the murder of a former Petaluma couple, Jesse and Sarah Wickersham, at their remote farm house west of Cloverdale. Married cousins, they were the nephew and niece of Petaluma banker Isaac Wickersham, who owned numerous properties in Chinatown. Unfounded accusations pinned the murder on the couple’s Chinese cook, who disappeared after the crime.^[23]

With newspapers fanning the flames, “anti-coolie” meetings were held across Sonoma County, resulting in Chinese being attacked, beaten, and driven out. Some had their homes and shops burned to the ground, including in Petaluma.^[24] Taking advantage of the exodus, McNear replaced a shanty-filled lot he owned in Chinatown with the 1886 McNear Building, launching a commercial gentrification of the block.^[25]

*John McNear before his the new 1886 McNear Building (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)*

Within a year, labor shortages—largely in jobs whites refused to fill—led to the gradual return of the Chinese to Sonoma County. Exhibiting resilience in the face of hostilities, their numbers rebounded by 1890 to 1,145, of which 104 lived in Petaluma.^[26] Looking to reduce tensions, McNear offered to build a segregated Chinese colony east of town, on the condition the Chinese be compelled to abandon Chinatown.^[27]That never materialized.

Instead, an ongoing series of discriminatory legislative acts led to the steady reduction of California’s Chinese population. Among them was the Geary Act introduced in 1892 by Sonoma County congressman Thomas Geary, a former Petaluma lawyer. It extended the Chinese Exclusion Act another ten years. Once it expired, Congress extended the exclusion period indefinitely. It would not be lifted until 1943.^[28]

*Congressman Thomas J. Geary (photo public domain)*

Reverend Pond continued his regular visits to town to preach at the Congregational Church, but closed down the Chinese Mission School in 1900, soon after celebrating its 25^th anniversary.^[29] In the years that followed, Petaluma’s Chinatown was reduced to the block of Petaluma Boulevard between C and D streets, as the Chinese population fell to below two dozen.^[30]

*View of Chinatown on Petaluma Blvd (then Third Street) between C and D Streets, early 1900s* *(photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)*

McNear designated a section at Cypress Hill for the Chinese, to be buried in their traditional Buddhist ceremonies.^[31] In 1913, the Six Companies exhumed their remains and shipped them back to China.^[32] McNear himself was laid to rest in Cypress Hill in 1918, beside his first wife Clara. He was joined there by Reverend Pond in 1925, in the plot McNear gifted him in 1866.^[33]

A few weeks after Pond’s death, the last remaining vestige of Chinatown—a Chinese laundry and boarding house between C and D streets owned by the McNear family—was torn down.^[34]

*McNear family gravesite, Cypress Hill Cemetery (photo public domain)*

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 3, 2023.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Died,” Daily Alta California, January 18, 1866; the child, Herbert Lincoln McNear, died two months later: “Died,” Daily Alta California, March 16, 1866.

[2] “Dr. Pond Rests at Cypress Hill,” Petaluma Argus, November 18, 1925; “Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, November 16, 1877.

[3] “The Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 1868,” Office of the Historian, Department of State, United States website: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/burlingame-seward-treaty

[4] The 1870 U.S. census lists 473 Chinese in Sonoma County, 121 of them living in Petaluma; the 1880 U.S. census lists 904 Chinese living in the county, with no breakout for Petaluma as it was under a population of 4,000. The census groups them under the category “Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and all other,” but “Our Population,” Petaluma Argus, December 17, 1880, states there are 904 Chinese, two Japanese, and 339 Indians and half-breeds.

[5] Nancy Olmsted, “A History of Paving Blocks Along San Francisco’s South Beach Waterfront,” San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, July 1991, p. 17; Sue Doherty, “Sonoma Stories and the Song Wong Bourbeau Collection,” Masters Thesis, Sonoma State University, 2005, p. 34; “Notes from the White Family Collection,” Katherine Rinehart private archives: in 1880 ,Chinese crews worked on levees in Lakeville to reclaim marshland; “More Johns,” Petaluma Argus, May 6, 1869.

[6] Chinese stores and shanties are listed in the 1883 Sanborn map of Petaluma extending along Western Avenue from Kentucky to Main Street, and from there down Main and Third streets to D Street, as well as along B Street from Main Street to Fourth Street.

[7] “Chinese New Year,” Petaluma Argus, January 30, 1868: abalone porterhouse steak & tobacco factory; Ad for physician Dr. Shing Kee, Petaluma Argus, November 14, 1873; Ad for Chung Kee Chinese Grocery, Petaluma Argus, July 25, 1875; Ad for See Hop Chinese Grocery, Petaluma Argus, October 5, 1875; “Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, January 14, 1876: 6 Chinese wash houses, 3 Chinese drug stores; Ad for Wa Sing Wash House, Petaluma Courier, July 19, 1877; “After the Riot,” Petaluma Argus, August 2, 1877: Petaluma had 10 Chinese wash houses, 5 Chinese stores, and boarding houses; “Not Very Pretty,” Petaluma Argus, August 20, 1887: new Chinese wash house on North Main; “Our Fires,” Petaluma Courier, April 6, 1881: 5 Chinese wash houses listed; Ad for Wah Yene Employment Office and Chinese Goods store, Petaluma Argus, November 24, 1882; Ad for Wah Lee Wash House, Petaluma Argus, April 28, 1883; Ad for Jim Kee Laundry Petaluma Courier, January 14, 1891.

[8] “Chinese New Year,” Petaluma Argus, January 30, 1900; “Has His Say,” Petaluma Courier, October 11, 1901; “Explore California: Weaverville Joss House Park,” California State Parks Foundation, January 17, 2020. https://www.calparks.org/blog/explore-california-weaverville-joss-house-state-historic-park; Gordon C. Phillips, “The Chinese in Sonoma County, California, 1900-1930: The Aftermath of Exclusion,”Masters Thesis, Sonoma State University, 2015, pgs. 64, 74; http://sonoma-dspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/153831/PhillipsG_Thesis.pdf;sequence=1

[9]Jean Pfaelzer, California a Slave State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), p. 252: more than 90% of the Chinese population in 1870 was male; Iris Chang, The Chinese in America (NY: Viking Books, 2003), pp. 80-86; Phillips, pp. 80-84; “Is There No Remedy?” Petaluma Argus, August 26, 1871; “Half Told,” Petaluma Argus, September 2, 1871; “Chinese Wedding,” Petaluma Argus, September 12, 1873: bride from local brothel; “Recorder’s Court,” Petaluma Argus, September 12, 1873: gambling house; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, March 14, 1879: Chinese gambling house; “Voice of the People,” Petaluma Argus, December 19, 1885: five alleged opium dens in town; “The Chinese,” Petaluma Argus, February 6, 1886: local brothels; “Police Notes,” Petaluma Argus, August 27, 1880: opium dens; “Caught in the Act,” Petaluma Courier, September 16, 1896: opium den; Phillips, pp. 7, 63-64.

[10] 6,093 of Sonoma County’s 19,833 were foreign born per the 1880 U.S. Census, “Population by Race, Sex, and Nativity,” p. 428.

[11] Chang, pp. 78-80.

[12] Thomas Chinn, A History of the Chinese in California (San Francisco, CA: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 22; Pfaelzer, p. 262.

[13] Pfaelzer, p. 147, pp. 247-250.

[14] Chinn, p. 21; “China Camp State Park,” Marin History Museum video, November 26, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8tZpz1YAlE.

[15] William C. Pond, Gospel Pioneering: Reminiscences of Early Congregationalism in California 1833-1920 (Oberlin, OH: The News Printing Company, 1921), pgs. 10, 17, 91-95, 130-135; Robert Segar II, “Some Denominational Reactions to Chinese Immigration to California, 1856-1892,” Pacific Historical Review , February, 1959, Vol. 28, No. 1, pgs. 51, 58; Wesley S. Woo, “Presbyterian Mission: Christianizing and Civilizing The Chinese in Nineteenth Century California,” American Presbyterians, Fall 1990, Vol. 68, No. 3, pgs. 68, 71, 167-172.

[16] Segar, pp. 52-53.

[17] Ralph Kauer, “The Workingmen’s Party of California,” Pacific Historical Review, 1944, 13 (3): 278–291.

[18] Kearney first held a meeting in Donahue, but was a no show at the Main Street Plaza rally, leaving his lieutenants Wellock and Knight to preside: “Anti-Coolie Meeting,” Petaluma Courier, December 27, 1877; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, February 15, 1878; “Kearney,” Petaluma Argus, March 15, 1878; “Kearney, Wellock, and Knight,” Petaluma Argus, March 22, 1878; “Workingmen’s Club at Donahue,” Petaluma Argus, March 29, 1878; “Workingmen’s Meeting Saturday,” Petaluma Argus, March 29, 1878; “The Workingmen’s Meeting,” Petaluma Courier, April 11, 1878; “Notice,” Petaluma Argus, May 3, 1878; “Workingmen’s Convention,” Petaluma Argus, May 31, 1878.

[19] “Farmers’ Club,” Petaluma Argus, June 2, 1873; “Organization of a Grange,” Petaluma Argus, June 16, 1873; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, February 4, 1876; “W.W. Chapman,” Petaluma Courier, June 5, 1878; “History,” Sebastopol Grange #306, http://sebastopolgrange.org/history/; W.L. Robinson, First Century of Service and Evolution – The Grange 1867 – 1967 (National Grange, 1967); Clarke Chambers, California Farm Organizations (University of California, 1952), p. 11; “Sonoma County National Bank, Petaluma, 50^th Anniversary,” Coast Banker, Volume 16, Coast Banker Publishing Company, 1916; “The Boycott,” Petaluma Argus, March 13, 1886; Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, “A History of California Agriculture,” University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (Giannini Foundation Publications, December, 2017). http://giannini.ucop.edu/publications.htm.

[20] Chang, pp. 124-128.

[21] Chang, p. 132.

[22] “Another Blaze,” Petaluma Courier, February 14, 1883; “Polly Larkin’s Pot-Pourri,” Petaluma Courier, October 1, 1884; “The Fire Limits,” Petaluma Argus, Aril 2, 1875; The laundry ban applied to the city’s fire limits: “Legal Notice: Ordinance No. 11,” Petaluma Courier, November 19, 1884; “Fire Friday Evening,” Petaluma Courier, August 15, 1894.

[23] “A Terrible Crime,” Petaluma Courier, January 27, 1886; “Ah Ti, the Murderer,” Petaluma Argus, January 30, 1886; Jeff Elliot examines holes in the accusations against the Wickersham’s cook: “The Wickersham Murders,” “Who Killed the Wickershams,” Santarosahistory.com, http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2017/05/the-wickersham-murders/.

[24] “Anti-Coolie Meeting,” Sonoma Democrat, February 6, 1886; “Going Below,” Petaluma Argus, February 13, 1866; “Sebastopol Anti-Chinese League,” Sonoma Democrat, February 27, 1886; “Blew Them Up,” Petaluma Argus, March 10, 1886; Chinatown fires (no headline) Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1887.

[25] “An Additional Story,” Petaluma Argus, April 3, 1886.

[26] Phillips, pp. 38-39; “Fruit Growers,” Petaluma Courier, march 13, 1886; “Potato Diggers,” Petaluma Argus, November 19, 1887; U.S. Census, 1890.

[27] “Polly Larkin’s Pot-Pourri,” Petaluma Courier, October 1, 1884: McNear first raised the idea of a colony in East Petaluma in 1884; “A Persistent Fire,” Petaluma Argus, September 3, 1887; “Locals,” Petaluma Argus, September 17, 1887; “Recent Burning,” Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1887; “That Citizens’ Meeting,” Petaluma Courier, September 21, 1887.

[28] Chang, pp. 125-141.

[29] Pond visits include: “Chinese Sunday School,” Petaluma Argus, July 23, 1875; “Items of Local Interest,” Petaluma Argus, August 10, 1877; Pond’s visits to Petaluma: “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, July 9, 1875; “Religious,” Petaluma Argus, July 21, 1876; “Items of Local Interest,” Petaluma Argus, August 10, 1877; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, August 8, 1879; “Local Brevities” Petaluma Argus, August 6, 1880; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, September 2, 1881; “Twenty-Fourth Anniversary,” Petaluma Argus, May, 8, 1899; “Congregational Church Dedicated Friday,” Petaluma Argus, June 28, 1901; “Dr. Pond Arrives from San Francisco,” Petaluma Argus, August 17, 1903; “Chinese School,” Petaluma Argus, August 15, 1885; “Chinese Mission Anniversary,” Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1900.

[30] U.S. Census; 1894 Sanborn Map.

[31] “Chinaman Gone,” Petaluma Argus, February 12, 1875.

[32] “Remains Will Be Shipped to Orient,” Petaluma Courier, May 2, 1913; “6,000 Will Sail Home to Final Rest in China,” Los Angeles Herald, April 23, 1913.

[33] “Dr. Pond Rests at Cypress Hill,” Petaluma Argus, November 18, 1925; “People Honor Memory of J.A. McNear,” Petaluma Courier, June 22, 1918.

[34] “Chinatown Building Being Razed,” Petaluma Courier, January 7, 1926.

Petaluma’s Real Main Street Video Presentation, Part I

In this video presentation sponsored by the Petaluma Historical Museum and the Sonoma County Library, historian John Sheehy explores how a diverse community of Jewish, Chinese, and Swiss Italian immigrant merchants made Petaluma’s Main Street such a bustling melting pot in the 19th century.

Real Main Street Video Presentation, Part II

Part II of the series explores the early Irish, Black, and German communities.