![]() ![]() ![]() They were often mistreated, and even, in a few instances, expelled or lynched. These young Japanese men worked for years in the Inland Northwest just to pay off their passage fare. Japanese immigrants first arrived in Eastern Washington during the late 1800s and early 1900s, mostly as railroad workers and mine laborers. In the 1880s and 1890s, the railroad and mine companies in the West attempted to solve their massive manpower needs by looking across the Pacific to Japan. Despite the low numbers of Chinese residents included in the 1900 census, there was a large Chinese population of mostly retired railroad workers living in the area between Howard and Washington Streets along the Spokane River. The railroad brought the “boom” to the boomtown that was Spokane, and the unsung heroes of this transformation into a regional hub were the Chinese immigrants who built the railroad. Chinese workers first showed up in the Spokane area as early as the 1850's and large numbers worked in the local mining and railroad industries, they experienced hostility, racism, violence, and legal exclusion as they labored to build the region’s railroad networks. The Great Northern Clocktower at Riverfront Park is what remains of the Great Northern Railroad Depot, a transportation hub for the region. This project allows us to share the history that was buried and erased starting with the Chinese Seclusion Act in 1882, the incarceration of Japanese American at internment camps during WW2 and tearing down Japan Alley/ Chinatown to make way for Expo 74. The 1902 Great Northern Depot and its iconic clock tower signaled the arrival of rail transport in central Spokane. Their efforts, which connected the western United States to the eastern United States, laid the foundation for the extraordinary economic prosperity enjoyed by the United States in the years that followed. One of the greatest engineering feats in American history is the building of the railroads built by Chinese Immigrants.
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