Carson City lecture details lives of immigrant Chinese woodcutters

Chinese immigrants were abundant in the mining camps of the Sierra Nevada in the latter half of the 19th century.

In the 1860s, the first Chinese immigrants found their way to Aurora, Nev. and by the 1870s, they had settled along King Street in Bodie, Calif., creating a sizeable Chinatown. By the 1880s, they cornered the woodcutting market, providing cordwood and charcoal to neighboring residents, businesses and ranches.

The immigrants left behind few written records of their own, but they are recorded in the historical documents of others, as well as in the artifacts and sites they left behind. Some of the artifacts and photos of the sites made up the heart of the exhibition, “Fueling the Boom: Chinese Woodcutters in the Great Basin,” at the Nevada State Museum in Carson.

On Thursday, one of the exhibit’s co-curators, Dr. Emily Dale, will present “Fueling the Boom: Chinese Woodcutters in the Great Basin, 1870-1920, Perspectives from a Historical Archaeologist.”

Dale’s presentation is this month’s Frances Humphrey Lecture Series event and is scheduled for 6:30 to 8 p.m. inside the museum’s South Gallery. The cost is $8 for adults and free for museum members and children 17 and younger. Seating is limited; reserve a seat by going to http://nvculture.org/nevadastatemuseumcarsoncity/events.

In this talk, Dale will discuss how historical records, archaeological data, descendant communities and public archaeology painted a portrait of the lives and choices of the Chinese featured in this exhibit.

Dale is a lecturer at Northern Arizona University, specializing in the historical archaeology of the 19th- and 20th-century American West. Her research focuses on immigration, culture contact and ethnic and racial discrimination. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2016. She is working on several publications related to her work on the Chinese of Aurora and their associated woodcutting camps.

The Nevada State Museum is located at 600 N. Carson St.