The recreation trail along the Monterey waterfront passes a fenced point at the edge of Pacific Grove. Behind the fence stand the lab buildings of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. For about fifty years this rocky point held something else. It was the largest Chinese settlement on the Monterey Peninsula.
Arrival
Chinese families reached Monterey Bay by boat in the early 1850s. The Pacific Grove Museum says they likely came from Kwangtung Province in southern China. Their boats were separated on the way. Some landed in Mendocino. Others came ashore near the Carmel River. One family account says a junk wrecked near Point Lobos in 1854.
The newcomers camped first at Point Lobos. Then they settled for good at Point Alones. Historians count them among the first Chinese families to come to America together. Before them, the Chinese who crossed were mostly men who came alone to work.
Sampans and fire baskets
The fishermen built flat-bottomed sampans about twenty-one feet long. Each one carried a single triangular sail. They took rockfish, halibut, sardines, mackerel and yellowtail. From the shore they gathered abalone, sea urchins and seaweed.
By 1864 the village was drying abalone and shipping it to San Francisco for export to China. By 1875 it sent about a hundred tons of dried and salted catch to San Francisco dealers each year.
Other fishermen soon claimed the daytime grounds and pushed the Chinese off. So the village fished at night. Each boat hung a basket of burning pine from a pole at the bow. The light drew squid up to the surface, where the fishermen netted them. That night work started California's squid fishery. It is now one of the largest in the state.
The squid dried on open ground between the village and Lighthouse Avenue. Men raked them over in the sun. In May 1890 the residents of New Monterey petitioned against the smell.
Land they could not own
The families never owned the point. In 1880 the landowner David Jacks sold about 7,000 acres, including Point Alones, to the Pacific Improvement Company. The company was controlled by the railroad men known as the Big Four. Chinese immigrants could not hold title to land.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made things worse. It barred them from citizenship. A worker who left the country could not come back. Men who stayed lived apart from their families for years.
Pacific Grove's children went to public school. Chinese children did not. In 1890 Chinese parents petitioned for a place in the schools. A separate mission school opened that October. Reports from 1894 say Chinese children were stoned on their way to class.
Five fires, then a sixth
Fire found the village again and again. One in 1886 destroyed a two-story restaurant. One in 1889 burned nearly half the village. Smaller fires followed in 1898, 1900 and 1903.
The last one started on May 16, 1906. That was four weeks after the San Francisco earthquake. About two hundred people lived in the village then. Some fifty refugees from the city were staying with them. Accounts say the hydrant was too small for the hose. The water was cut off. Almost every building burned.
Residents could not put the fire out. They ran to save what they could carry. Crowds gathered to watch. Some of them looted. The looters came back the next day to search the ashes. The cause of the fire was never settled.
Fenced out
San Francisco's Chinatown was rebuilt after its fire. Point Alones was not. The Pacific Improvement Company fenced the site and posted guards. Families who tried to rebuild saw their work torn down. Many moved to a smaller village at McAbee Beach in Monterey. A man named Quock Tuck Lee was the last to leave, about a year after the fire.
The company planned to give the land to the University of California for a biology school. It was never built. The ground sat empty for more than ten years. Stanford's marine station stands there now.
In 2022 the Pacific Grove City Council formally apologized to the Chinese settlers and their descendants. Each spring a Walk of Remembrance runs from the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History to the old village site. Gerry Low-Sabado helped start it. She was the great-granddaughter of Quock Mui, who was born in the village in 1859. Quock Mui is believed to be the first documented Chinese American woman born in this country.
Why it stayed with me
I grew up around the Monterey Bay. I didn't learn about the village until much later. What stays with me is the fence. A fire can start a hundred ways. Nobody ever proved how this one did. The fence and the guards came after, and someone chose them. Fifty years of work on that point ended with a man standing watch so the families could not come home.