Chinese American History
From Gold Mountain to the transcontinental railroad, from the Exclusion Act to Silicon Valley, the story of Chinese Americans is woven into the fabric of the nation they built and were denied.
Gold Mountain
They called California Gam Saan, Gold Mountain. They came from southern China with debts to repay and families to feed, and they built more of this country than history has ever given them credit for.
Chinese workers built the most difficult half of the first transcontinental railroad and were largely absent from the completion ceremony at Promontory Summit in 1869.
Sources & Further Reading
- National Archives, Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts
- Library of Congress, Chinese Immigration
- Smithsonian, Chinese Americans and the Transcontinental Railroad
- Supreme Court Historical Society, United States v. Wong Kim Ark
- American Immigration Council, Chinese Americans and the Railroad
- National Archives, Angel Island Immigration Station
Immigration statistics are drawn from U.S. Census records, the National Archives, and the SlaveVoyages and immigration databases. Legal history is sourced from the Supreme Court Historical Society and the Library of Congress. Railroad workforce figures are from the American Immigration Council and Stanford University's Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project.