Archaeology on Spring Street: Discrimination, Ordinance 32, and the Overseas Chinese in Aurora, Nevada

Abstract

Aurora, Nevada, a mid-nineteenth-century mining boomtown, contained one of the state's earliest Chinese populations. In 1864, Aurora's Board of Aldermen passed Ordinance 32, a law intended to create a Chinatown on Spring Street in the northwest section of town. The success and impacts of the law, however, are unexplored in the historical and documentary record. Combining historical documentation, including maps, tax assessment rolls, and reports from local and nearby contemporary newspapers, with the results of archaeological surveys and the 2011 excavations of Spring Street, the author will discuss the implications of Ordinance 32 on Aurora's Chinese population as well as the immigrants' presence on the landscape and the reaction of Aurora's non-Chinese residents to their Chinese neighbors.