Chinese Again in Humboldt, Part One

In 1906, 20 years had passed since the majority of Humboldt’s Chinese residents were driven out of the county. The accidental death in 1885 of a Eureka city council member, caught in the crossfire in a shootout between two Chinese men at Eureka’s Fourth and E streets, was seized on by anti-Chinese activists as an excuse to enforce their rallying cry of “The Chinese must go.” Within two days, Eureka’s 300-plus Chinese residents had been forced onto steamships bound for San Francisco, leaving their homes and businesses behind. The next year, most other towns in Humboldt County followed Eureka’s example. The unwritten law forbidding Chinese settlement in Humboldt would be enforced for more than half a century.

A 1904 publication by the county chamber of commerce, the Humboldt County Souvenir, declared, “One fact makes Humboldt unique among the counties of California, and indeed, on the Pacific Coast — we have no Chinese.” This claim ignored the fact that the 1900 U.S. Census showed five Chinese men living in Klamath and Orleans, and the 1910 census would show six. At least three of these men — Charley Moon, Wong Bow and John Cook — were married to Indigenous women. The Humboldt County school census of 1904, the same year that the Humboldt County Souvenir was published, showed six school-age children of Chinese ancestry living in Northern Humboldt.

In the late 1880s, Ferndale-area business interests had conflicted with the county’s anti-Chinese activists over the issue of whether a San Francisco-based packing company could employ Chinese workers in a salmon cannery at the mouth of the Eel River. The cannery closed in 1890, partly due to this conflict.

On Jan. 31, 1905, The Ferndale Enterprise wrote of the Eel River king salmon: “For many years they were canned on this river at a profit and the price paid fishermen was much better then than now.” This article stated, “Since the closing down of the old cannery … fishermen can hope for but little.” The Enterprise recommended, “What is needed is a cannery on Eel River and here is an opportunity for someone with capital to invest in a business that will give in return a fair profit for the outlay.”

The opportunity was seized by the Starbuck-Tallant packing company of Astoria, Oregon. Members of the Tallant family had experience with the Eel River fishing industry; Nathaniel Tallant had been president of the San Francisco firm involved in the 1880s Eel River Cannery controversy. Throughout 1905, the newly-formed Ferndale Chamber of Commerce worked closely with the Starbuck-Tallant Co. to build a cold storage plant for salmon at Port Kenyon, about 2 miles from Ferndale. After the October-December salmon season ended, The Enterprise reported Jan. 12, 1906, “The establishment of the Port Kenyon Cold Storage plant has demonstrated to the fishermen on lower Eel River that a good price can be obtained for their fish the season through.”

Following this success, the Starbuck-Tallant Co. contemplated building a new cannery. The Ferndale Enterprise reported on June 19, 1906, “There seems to be a fair chance of a cannery being established at Port Kenyon this fall to be run in conjunction with the cold storage plant there.” As The Enterprise explained, the cannery would “handle the smaller salmon that cannot be used in any way by the cold storage plant. Should the cannery be established it will fully double the money received from the fishing industry on Eel River.”

On June 22, 1906, The Enterprise reported:

A special meeting of the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce was called last Monday evening to consider the contents of a telegram received that day from W. E. Tallant of Astoria, a member of the Port Kenyon Cold Storage Co. Mr. Tallant wired to ask for information concerning the outlook for a cannery at Port Kenyon, the same to be operated by Chinese labor, without which, it is claimed to have been demonstrated, such a plant cannot be successfully conducted.

As The Enterprise noted, the chamber of commerce members considered this question in “a discussion of some length.” At last, chamber members adopted a resolution stating, “There will be no objection emanating from this body for said cannery to be so conducted, providing the following conditions are complied with.” Those conditions were:

1st —That such labor shall be used in the canning of fish only.

2nd —That party or parties so conducting said cannery assure our people that said Chinese laborers shall come direct to Port Kenyon on or about the beginning of the fishing season, namely, October 16th of each year, and remaining while the cannery is being conducted during each fishing season only, and at the expiration of each season the Chinese to be sent out of Humboldt County direct from Port Kenyon.

3rd —That the Chinese be not permitted at any time during their stay, to leave the vicinity of the cannery in Port Kenyon.

For the businessmen from Astoria, it made perfect sense to employ Chinese workers in the new cannery. Clatsop County, Oregon, had a very different history with Chinese residents than did Humboldt County. As of the 1880 U.S. census, there had been only 243 Chinese people living in Humboldt County, out of a total population of 15,512. In Clatsop County, by contrast, the Chinese residents in 1880 numbered 2,317, with the county’s total population being only 7,222. Chinese people in Astoria were 30 percent of the town’s population in 1880. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as described in a 1973 retrospective published by The Daily Astorian, Astoria was “the salmon cannery capital of the United States, if not of the world.” The vast majority of the workforce in those canneries was Chinese.

Astoria was not immune to the anti-Chinese movement that was so powerful in the western United States in the 1870s and ’80s. In February of 1886 — the same month when Ferndale people resolved in a town meeting to follow Eureka’s lead and expel Ferndale’s Chinese residents — the owners of 19 Astorian salmon canneries signed an agreement with the anti-Chinese Knights of Labor organization promising not to employ Chinese workers after the 1886 canning season. It seems, however, the cannery owners signed this agreement to get the labor activists off their backs rather than because they intended to honor it. In 1887 and onward, the owners ignored the agreement (despite it having been published in the Astorian) and continued to run their canneries with Chinese workers.

In that summer of 1906, the new cannery for Eel River salmon was constructed at Port Kenyon. But while Ferndale people might see employing Chinese cannery laborers as making good economic sense, and the Astorians saw it as business as usual, news of the chamber’s resolution caused outrage elsewhere in Humboldt County.

On June 23, The Daily Humboldt Times of Eureka reported on the Ferndale chamber’s resolution. A June 26 Times article headlined “Opposed to the Chinese” reported that the secretary of the Federated Trades Council, which met in Eureka, had been “instructed to address a communication to the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce strongly protesting against the Chamber’s action.” At another Federated Trades Council meeting later in the summer, members expressed their opinion that “Humboldt County can get along without the Chinamen.” The Times reported on July 20 that the union of Blue Lake Woodsmen Local No. 1, “which has a membership of nearly 400 … are unanimously opposed to the introduction of Chinese labor in Humboldt County for any purpose whatever.” The members of Pepperwood’s Woodsmen No. 6, according to a July 26 Times article, had formed a committee “at work against the proposed importation of Chinese at Port Kenyon.”

These ominous rumblings apparently had little impact on the new cannery’s directors and preparations went ahead as planned. On Sept. 28, The Enterprise reported, “One hundred and fifty tons of machinery arrived at Port Kenyon Tuesday for use in the salmon cannery that is now being rushed to completion. Contractors Steeves & Flowers and their assistants are now erecting the addition.”

On Saturday, Sept. 29, the steamer Roanoke from Portland via Astoria arrived in harbor at Eureka. Its passengers included several members of the Tallant family and a cannery workforce comprising 23 Chinese men, four Japanese men, and six young white women, several of whom were Russian. The Times reported in its Sept. 30 “Ocean and Waterfront” section that “The vessel had good weather down the coast and the passengers enjoyed the trip.” However, that trip was to provide the last peaceful moments that the cannery’s management and workforce would enjoy for many days to come.

Next week, the second installment of this four-part series will examine the backlash against “the Chinese return to Humboldt.”

Alex Service (she/her) is the curator at the Fortuna Depot Museum

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Ferndale Enterprise.