Dayton Chinatown
Lyon County, Lyon County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Dayton Chinatown. Dayton is the site of Nevada’s first China Town. By the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from China, along with immigrants from Japan and Korea, moved to the United States, They were pushed by economic disruption in their home countries and pulled by the promises of gold and employment in the Rocky Mountain West.The Dayton Chinese were hired by Edward Rose in August 1857 to dig the four-mile Rose Ditch from the mouth of the Carson River west of town to the miners working the placers at the entrance to Gold Canyon. Despite discrimination, the promise of jobs compelled the Chinese to stay. They mined in Gold Canyon and settled along the Carson River in this area. The community continued to be an important hub for Chinese Americans in Nevada into the 1880s.
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
Dayton holds the site of Nevada's first Chinatown, settled as hundreds of thousands of immigrants from China, Japan, and Korea crossed the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century — pushed by upheaval at home and pulled by the promise of gold and work in the Rocky Mountain West. In August 1857, Edward Rose hired Dayton's Chinese laborers to dig the four-mile Rose Ditch, carrying water from the Carson River to the placer miners at Gold Canyon. Facing steady discrimination but drawn by the work, they mined the canyon and settled along the river, and the community remained a vital hub for Chinese Americans in Nevada into the 1880s.
Why it matters
Dayton's Chinatown records the largely uncredited labor of Chinese immigrants who built the ditches and worked the diggings of the mining West, a founding chapter of Asian American history written in the earliest years of Nevada settlement.
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Related people
- · Edward Rose
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Carson Valley
Douglas County, NV
The broad, cultivated Carson Valley below began as a ribbon of natural meadow where California-bound 49'ers rested their stock and bought vegetables from the Mormon Station settlers. After the 1858 discovery of the Comstock Lode, farmers extended the meadows by irrigation to feed the miners of Virginia City, and from 1870 German, Danish, and Swiss immigrants enlarged the fields further to supply booming camps like Bodie, Tonopah, and Goldfield. Sound range and farming practices have kept it among Nevada's finest agricultural regions.
Dayton
Lyon County, NV
Dayton is among the oldest settlements in Nevada, born as a riverside resting spot where California-bound emigrants paused after crossing the desert. In 1849 Abner Blackburn plucked a gold nugget from the mouth of Gold Canyon, sparking the prospecting that a decade later uncovered the fabulous Comstock ore bodies at Gold Hill and Virginia City. The town cycled through several names before settling on Dayton in 1861, honoring John Day, who surveyed its streets, and it thrived for decades as a milling and trading hub and as the Lyon County seat until 1911.
Nevada's First Gold Discovery
Lyon County, NV
In July 1849, Abner Blackburn, a former member of the Mormon Battalion, made what is regarded as the first gold discovery in present-day Nevada near this spot, followed by William Prouse's find up Gold Canyon in 1850. Convinced California's riches were greater, most emigrants pressed on, but by 1851 some 200 placer miners—among them James "Old Virginny" Finney—were working the canyon. Their continuous presence at Gold Canyon's mouth made Dayton Nevada's first non-Native settlement.
Dayton Cemetery
Lyon County, NV
Founded in 1851, Dayton Cemetery is one of the oldest continuously maintained burial grounds in Nevada, sited beside the emigrant trail to the California gold fields whose wagon ruts can still be traced nearby. The town grew from an 1849 gold discovery in Gold Canyon and was named in 1861 for surveyor John Day; that same year Lyman Crockett dug the cemetery's first grave. Among those buried here is James Finney, "Old Virginny," the namesake of Virginia City, alongside many Italian American families who farmed the Carson River bottoms to feed the Comstock.