Tehama - The Magazine - Red Bluff Daily News
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/195321
The Chinese soon championed local legismade up about eight lation aimed at the percent of the population Chinese, imposing, for of Red Bluff -- a percentexamples, a license fee age it maintain for severon laundries, and tolls al decades. The whites on anyone transporting and the Chinese seldom vegetables across town. interacted socially, except 1886 saw the formafor occasional street gamtion of the Citizens' bling sessions. Anti-Chinese Association As early as 1855, local of Red Bluff, the papers were printing Moderate Law and rumors of prostitution, Order Anti-Chinese secret tunnels, slavery Society, the Anti-Coolie and even murders in League and other Chinatown. The Red groups which boycotted Bluff Sentinel openly all Chinese-produced called for elected officials goods and any white to "send the pig-tailed businesses that Celestials and flat-nosed employed Chinese wollyheads beyond the workers. confines of the state." From pressure from The Red Bluff People's the western states, Cause discouraged readCongress finally passed ers from buying any restrictions on immigrafruits and vegetables tion, stopping the flow Red Bluff's Chinatown comprised a two-by-two-block area from the "saffron-colored of Chinese into the U.S., along the Sacramento River on High Street — now Rio Street. sons of the Flowery after which the populaKingdom," and perpetution steadily declined, ated rumors that the Chinese treated the fruits and vegetables leaving behind only a series of stone walls and legends. they sold with arsenic. The animosity of the majority of residents and the local The 1870s brought increased agitation between the races, papers certainly lend credence to stories of a subterranean and it eventually erupted into violence. In 1871, two white world of escape. The problem is that more than 160 years arsonists set fire to a home in Chinatown, and a white farmer have passed since the Chinese arrived in Red Bluff, no was beaten by a group of Chinese railroad workers after he solid evidence ha been found, and most local historians killed a Chinese man. agree that tales of the tunnels are, at the very least, exagSoon, there were organized anti-Chinese groups, which gerated. Tehama's BBQ Headquarters 16 Tehama - the Magazine, October, 2013