page_title: Locke, California
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Locke, California / History
caption_attribution_description: English: memorial in Locke to Chinese immigrants and laborers
context_page_description: Locke, also known as Locke Historic District, is an unincorporated community in California's Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The 10 acre town, within the 490 acre parcel was first deeded in 1883 to George W. Locke and his Sacramento mercantile business partner Samuel P. Lavenson, both lured in their youth by the Gold Rush to California from their birthplaces in New Hampshire. The village of Lockeport began with a few buildings first referenced in San Francisco Call newspaper on September 11, 1885. The original Lockeport two-story wood buildings were built for approximately $800 each with no solid foundations on reclaimed swampland. Over the past century the lack of foundations has caused many of the buildings to lean and have dramatically warped their sides and floors which is one of the attractions to tourists. Many Chinese immigrants during the early 20th century lived in Locke and ran the gambling halls and opium dens. Caucasian men were said to have run the houses of ill repute. Locke is located in the primarily agricultural region south of Sacramento, California, near State Route 160.
context_section_description: Legislation such as the Swampland Reclamation Act of 1861 was enacted in California to put perceived empty and wasted lands to use and stabilization. Much of this involved draining the Delta wetlands and building levees to regulate flood control in places like Locke. Mainly poor Chinese immigrants were hired to do this backbreaking reclamation work. Though contracted labor was often paid the equivalent of less than one dollar a day per worker, they built hundreds of miles of levees in waist deep water where malaria still rampaged, reclaiming a total 88,000 acres.
  The original beginning of Locke, then called Lockeport, was in 1912, when three Chinese merchants, two from the nearby town of Vorden and one from Walnut Grove, contracted tradesmen to construct three buildings.  Chan Tin Sin built the first building.  It was a combination dry goods store and beer saloon.  Yuen Lai Sing built a gambling hall.  Owyang Wing Cheong built the Lockeport Hotel & Restaurant.
  Following that early construction the Canton Hotel was built, along with several other buildings, one of which later became a bordello. A total of seven structures eventually formed the hamlet of Lockeport.  Though some merchants hoped to provide a destination for riverboat and train passengers, the idea never worked due to the discrimination against Chinese during those times.  One of the homes built in the first phase of construction provided shelter for Chan Tin Sin's cousin Chan Chor Get and his family from the discriminatory acts and violence in San Francisco Chinatown.
  On October 7, 1915, the Chinatown of nearby Walnut Grove was destroyed and burned after an accidental fire, thus causing a migration of Zhongshan Chinese into neighboring areas. Afterwards, the Main Street section of the town of Locke was settled and established by a group, headed by Lee Bing, of Chinese/American Businessmen Yuehai-speaking Chinese (a dialect of Yue Chinese) from the Zhongshan region of Guangdong province in China.  Differing in some respects from the predominant Toisanese Chinese-speakers in practice, they created a town of their own. The land was leased from George Locke as California law at the time forbade the selling of farmland to Asian immigrants by the California Alien Land Law of 1913. Many Chinese immigrants were facing serious discrimination in the major cities.   Because of its relatively large population of Chinese people at the time, the Chinese Kuomintang political party once had a local chapter in Locke. As the town grew, so did its reputation as a destination for illicit entertainment, gaining the nickname "California's Monte Carlo". At one point, it had five gambling halls, five brothels, speakeasies and opium dens.
  The population of Locke swelled with the growing season and harvest. Most of the reclaimed land in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta including Locke was used for cash crops, including asparagus, potato, sweet potatoes, white beans, pears, and apples. There would be as many as 1000 to 1500 Chinese people living in Locke.  Farmhands shared rooms in the boarding houses.  Chinese residents living in the homes behind Main Street also took in Chinese farm laborers. Chinese immigrants in Locke started patterns in California agriculture that are continued today in the Sacramento-San Joaquin region, including contracted labor, tenant farming, sharecropping, and the piece wage system. A community garden existed in the back and there was a special oven to make roast pigs on Sundays.  Chinese communities congregated in solidarity under difficult labor and social conditions fostered by legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, creating community gardens that maintained cultural relevancy in the 
  form of growing Chinese cabbage, snow peas, leafy vegetables, winter melon, and tomatoes. Baptist missionary Dr. Charles Shepherd would bring in his Chungmei home boys for the pear harvest at the end of July. Life in Locke had a great deal of accord. The Chinese mothers took care of each other's children when another mother had to go to work at the cannery across th
caption: Memorial in Locke to Chinese immigrants and laborers
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