California, USA — Fifty miles south of Sacramento, where the Sacramento River winds through canals, marshes, and farmland fed by Sierra Nevada rains, lies the California Delta — a tranquil region shaped by immigrant labor. Amid its vineyards and family-owned farms stands Locke, a town unique in American history: the only settlement built by Chinese people for Chinese people.
Locke’s narrow Main Street, lined with weathered wooden buildings and overhanging balconies, recalls its heyday in the 1920s, when more than 600 Chinese residents lived and worked here. The town bustled with grocery stores, restaurants, a Chinese-owned movie theater, hotels, herbal medicine shops, gambling parlors, and boarding houses.
Chinese workers first arrived in the Delta in the 1860s, many from the Sze Yap and Chungshan districts of Guangdong Province. Between 3,000 and 4,000 laborers were contracted to build hundreds of miles of levees under the 1861 Swamp and Overflow Act, reclaiming 88,000 acres of marshland for farming. Many stayed, working as farmhands and tenant farmers.
Beginning in 1872, California passed laws barring Chinese from owning land or obtaining business licenses. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act further halted immigration and naturalization until its repeal in 1943. In 1913, California enacted the Alien Land Law, prohibiting “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning agricultural land or holding leases longer than three years.
Despite these restrictions, Chinese laborers built a thriving Chinatown in Walnut Grove, a mile south of Locke. By 1880, its 814 residents included over 100 Chinese from Guangdong and a small Japanese community. But on October 7, 1915, a fire destroyed the Chinatown, displacing hundreds.
Some Sze Yap Chinese and Japanese families rebuilt in Walnut Grove through lease agreements with local landlords. Others, like prominent businessman Lee Bing — also known as “Charlie” — moved on. One of the few Chinese immigrants fluent in English, Bing had arrived in the US penniless, built a gambling house in 1908, and expanded into hardware, dry goods, barbering, billiards, and herbal medicine. The fire wiped out all seven of his businesses.
That same year, Bing led a group of Chungshan merchants who leased land from George Locke to build a new town — originally called Lockeport. Under the Alien Land Law, they could not purchase the land, but they erected homes, shops, and community institutions. By the mid-1920s, Locke thrived on the asparagus boom and railroad expansion, but was also known for its vice industry, including gambling halls, speakeasies, opium dens, and brothels.
After World War II, the Delta’s Chinese population dwindled as younger generations pursued education and careers outside agriculture. When the state shut down gambling in the 1950s, Locke’s economy faltered, and its population declined sharply.
Today, with around 60 residents, Locke endures as a living monument to Chinese American resilience — a place born out of discrimination and hardship, yet rich in history and cultural legacy.
SOURCE : BBC & Locke Foundation | Follow Us: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube |
