Sam Kee Laundry

There is an unprepossessing building in Napa, located at 1245 Main street, which has a rather checkered history. Originally built as the Pfeiffer Building in 1875, it is the oldest commercial and oldest stone building in the city of Napa. It has been part of a brewery, a boarding house and alleged bordello, a saloon, a laundry involved in a famous series of court cases, a meat market and deli, and most recently, a wine tasting bar.

The Pfieffer Building was built by Phillip Pfeiffer and was part of Barth’s Bavarian Brewery, arguably the first brewery in Napa. By 1901, it housed the “Old Stone Saloon” and in 1937, Sam Kee moved his laundry business into the building. The building housed the Sam Kee laundry until 1977, when the business, then owned by Bik Wong, closed its doors for good, the last remnant of a Chinatown and Chinese laundries in Napa. It then housed Andrews Meat Market and Deli until 2002 when Vintner’s Collective moved in. The building was heavily damaged in the 2014 Earthquake and rebuilt.

While all of this is important, Sam Kee and his business were very important in United States legal history. In the mid 1800s, Chinese immigrants to the United States were generally well received. There was a labor shortage, especially in California and the Chinese who came here filled the gap. This was not to last long. Competition in the Gold Fields and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, meant that there were thousands of young Chinese men who were willing to work for lower wages than Americans. This led to a rapid rise in anti-Chinese discrimination, especially in California and the western states. After California passed a series of anti-Chinese laws, many of which were soon found unconstitutional, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbid any immigration from China and forbade citizenship to Chinese immigrants. This was a stark reversal of the Burlingame Treaty of thirty tears earlier which allowed Chinese people to immigrate freely to the United States.

In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act, many cities and towns began to pass “nuisance” laws, that while being non-discriminatory on their face, were applied almost exclusively to the Chinese residents of the city or town. Napa was one of these. In 1887, Sam Kee was arrested and fined for operating a “public laundry” within the city of Napa. A recently enacted municipal ordinance declared that public laundries were a “nuisance” and the operator would be fined 100 dollars or put in jail for refusal to pay the fine, “not to exceed one day for each dollar of the fine”. Sam Kee refused to pay the fine and was subsequently jailed. He then asked the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals for a Writ of Habeus Corpus. Habeus Corpus was granted in In Re Sam Kee, 31 F. 680 (9th Cir. 1887) because the US Supreme Court had recently decided Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S. Ct. 1064 (1886) and the Ninth Circuit had previously decided The Stockton Laundry Case, 26 F. 611 (9th Cir. 1886). Both of these cases declared “nuisance laws” in violation of the 14^th Amendment of the United States when disproportionately applied to Chinese businesses.

In the opinion of the court, it was noted that the laundry had been operating in Napa for twenty years and that Sam Kee had been its owner for eight. Thus, the building Phillip Pfeiffer had built in 1875 housed a business not only with a long history in Napa, but also one that played a small part in ending discrimination against Chinese. It wouldn’t be until 1943 that the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, but the striking of “nuisance laws” was a first step.

GETTING THERE: From 414 Mason Street: Take Interstate 80 East toward Sacramento and then take Exit 33 onto CA-37W; then take Exit 19 onto CA-29N toward Napa. Take CA-221N and then stay on Soscol Avenue. Follow Soscol Avenue to Clinton Street. Turn left on Clinton Street and the building will be four blocks up on the left hand side.

 

China Camp State Park

   

 Since the first Chinese came here in the early 1800’s until the present day, Chinese Californians have played a part in the experiment that is California.  We all know of the contributions of Chinese during the Gold Rush and their labors building the Transcontinental Railroad, the buildings and wine caves of the Napa Valley and the discrimination and abuse they faced, yet the contributions of the Chinese who came here form an integral part of our state’s history and the Chinese community is still a major contributor to the economy, history and culture of our state.

While many of the Chinese who came to “Gold Mountain”, as they referred to California, did work in the gold fields and the service industries which provided the thousands of gold seekers with some semblance of a “civilized” life, operating laundries, stores, and restaurants; there were thousands of Chinese who worked in the young and very lucrative fishing industry.  From the border with the Oregon Country to San Diego, there was not a single fishing port that did not have Chinese fishermen.  

Here in California, Chinese fishermen plied the waters off the coast and in the San Francisco Bay and Delta.  In the San Francisco Bay, the major Chinese fishery was for shrimp, which as late as the  1950’s, were plentiful in the Bay.  In the 1880’s no fewer than seven major Chinese fishing villages ringed the Bay, and there were as many as 26 “fishing camps” in all.  From Richmond in the north to Redwood City in the south, Chinese shrimpers spread their nets to catch the shrimp as they “marched, in their thousands” along the bottom of the Bay.  Three species of shrimp were targeted, Crangon franciscorum, also known as the grass shrimp, Crangon nigricauda, the black tailed shrimp, and Crangon nigromaculata, the blue shrimp.  Before the 1900’s most of the shrimp was dried and exported to China.  

Beginning in 1910, restrictions were placed on the methods and seasons for shrimping.  The traditional Chinese shrimp nets were banned outright as was the export of shrimp.  The Chinese shrimp fishery went into a decline.  Then, in 1915, some restrictions were lifted and the fishery began to increase.  In 1924, a new net, designed by Frank Spenger, of Spenger’s restaurants, make shrimping in the Bay profitable again and by 1930 there were fourteen “shrimp camps” on the shores of San Francisco Bay; twelve on Hunter’s Point and two farther north, one in Marin and the other in Contra Costa Counties.  The total catch in 1930 was 2,687,831 pounds of shrimp harvested.  In 1930 the shrimp industry in San Francisco Bay employed 72 men and 35 boats.  

This was not to last, however. In 1939, the Navy seized Hunter’s Point by eminent domain and the shrimp camps were burned down.  That left two shrimp camps in on the Bay, Spenger’s located between Point Pinole and Point Molate and Quan’s located on Point San Pedro.  The Quan brother’s camp became known as “China Camp”.

The Quan family continued the tradition of shrimping in the Bay long after all the other shrimp camps were a memory.  From the 1930’s onward, the Quan Brothers shrimped, fished, rented out boats and ran a small cafe in the ever shrinking village they called home.  China Camp was donated to the State park system in the late 70’s with the stipulation that Frank Quan, the last of his family to still commercially fish, be allowed to live there until his death.  Frank sadly passed away in 2016, just shy of his 91st birthday.  Today, China Camp stands as a memorial to an industry which has faded away but it is still worth a visit.  

The Park has several preserved buildings, a museum, picnic grounds, six camp sites and several hiking trailheads.  The park also features a reconstructed shrimping junk, the Grace Quan. The beach is popular with kayakers and there is a small, but nice beach.  The cafe, which the Quan family ran for decades is preserved and serves as a snack stand and park store offering tee shirts post cards and other memorabilia.

GETTING THERE: From San Francisco, take 101N to exit 452 toward central San Rafael.  Turn right onto 2nd Street and then follow Point San Pedro Road approximately four miles to the state park enterance.