*****
Sadly, Chinese Camp burned to the ground this past Tuesday due to thunderstorms and lightning strikes all up and down the western foothills of the Sierras. From what I've heard, the church and school survived but not much else.
As I was telling Elmo who sent me a link, the fire was decades overdue because of the poor maintenance of the remaining buildings, but especially due to invasive and hardy trees imported from China known as Trees of Heaven or Chinese Elms. Those fuckers are so thick in Chinese Camp that they're growing out of windows and doors of the abandoned buildings. Even the asphalt on the roads was uneven because of the shallow roots they have - nature's speedbumps. It also didn't help matters that Chinese Camp is in an area with heavy thickets of manzanita, a large shrub that burns fast and very hot. Basically, Chinese Camp was one big self fed bonfire.
Below is a link to a youtube video that shows how overgrown the town is with those damned Chinese trees.
VIDEO HERE (6:23 minutes)
I wish I had a personal story to tell about the town but truth be known, even though it was only about 45 minutes from my place, I've only been through the town itself maybe 3-4 times. I've whizzed past it about a million times though. I stopped in at the old store one time but was disappointed they didn't sell rolling papers, so I never went back. If they can't even carry life's bare essentials I'll just take my business elsewhere. Fuck 'em.
There just wasn't any reason to stop there because the town didn't have a lot of history and the area wasn't much of a gold producer. It was such a poor producer of gold that the site that I go to for my Friday mining posts doesn't even list the town. I mean, it's right on the lower edge of the Mother Lode.
Chinese Camp's biggest claim to fame was the Tong War of 1856 when several hundred members of two Chinese gangs got pissed at each other and had a big fight 3-4 miles away where Red Hills Road tees off into La Grange Road (J59) near what is today the site of the old stage station and hotel. They fought halfheartedly for a few hours with clubs and swords incurring only four fatalities before saying fuck it and calling it a day, heading back to town to lick their wounds and smoke some opium with their homeboys.
Now you'll be singing Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting to yourself for the rest of the day. You're welcome.
The old stage station and hotel..... I'm pretty sure the Tong War happened 10 or 20 years before the station and hotel were built. I was able to check the sites out close up one day when I was working at the ranch they're on, but there's nothing left. Other than a single square nail I found where the hotel stood, there were no artifacts - no braces, hinges, latches, or anything else you'd normally find where an old building once stood.
The only thing marking the site of the station is a large circular stone corral that still stands on the south side of Red Hills Rd and can be seen using Google Earth. It can also be seen from either road using Street View. The area around the corral was used as a storage yard for ranch equipment when I was there so everything else has been erased - you can't even tell where the station building itself was located.
On the north side of road right there on the flat is where the hotel was. There's a short line of foundation stones still there that are visible during the winter when the grass is down, and that's the only clue as to where the hotel once stood.
And that's about all I know about the Chinese Camp/Tong War area.
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