An Update From Jacksonville’s Chinese Quarter

News October 21, 2013

(Courtesy Chelsea Rose)
SHARE:
Chinatown Wooden Feature Oregon
(Courtesy Chelsea Rose)

JACKSONVILLE, OREGON—A continuing excavation in the nineteenth-century Chinese Quarter of Jacksonville, Oregon, has uncovered preserved pieces of a wooden structure that had been destroyed by fire. “We are literally looking inside the house of a Chinese individual or individuals from 1888….It is a poorly understood population in history, not only in Jacksonville but in the West,” said Chelsea Rose of Southern Oregon University. The house is thought to have been situated behind a laundry. Artifacts from the house include an opium can, a drug used socially and as a pain reliever; a porcelain rice bowl; a cow’s jawbone; a button; Chinese coins; a mini-musket ball; a necklace chain; two bone dice; and the bottom of what may have been a liquor bottle. “There is so much opium paraphernalia coming out of here. But this was not an opium den. This was a house,” she added.

  • Features September/October 2013

    Tomb of the Vulture Lord

    A king’s burial reveals a pivotal moment in Maya history

    Read Article
    (© Kenneth Garrett)
  • Letter from Norway September/October 2013

    The Big Melt

    The race to find, and save, ancient artifacts emerging from glaciers and ice patches in a warming world

    Read Article
    Norway melting ice patch
    Courtesy Oppland County Council, Photo: Johan Wildhagen/Palookaville
  • Artifacts September/October 2013

    Roman Writing Tablet

    A tablet bearing a birthday party invite includes the earliest Latin script penned by a woman

    Read Article
    (© The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY)
  • Digs & Discoveries September/October 2013

    No Changeups on the Savannah

    Read Article
    (Private Collection/J.T. Vintage/The Bridgeman Art Library, Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY, Pat Benic/Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)