Compendium of the U.S. Eleventh Census, 1890

This transcription of the 1890 U.S. Eleventh Census shows the migration of Chinese populations in Oregon from 1870 to 1890. Chinese immigrants hoped to make a living in the United States so they could send wages back to family members in China. The first large group of Chinese immigrants arrived in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1850s to work in the gold mines of California and southern Oregon. Competition with white miners for gold deposits created tensions with over mining claims. As a result, Chinese miners were often forced to work unproductive or reworked mining placers and had to pay extra taxes to keep their claims.

Railroad companies took advantage of Chinese willingness to work long hours for relatively little pay and hired them to work on the railways. The construction of the Oregon & California Railroad in the 1870s brought hundreds of Chinese immigrants to the Umpqua and Rogue River valleys. In 1870, 634 Chinese lived in Jackson County, while only 508 lived in Multnomah County, which contained Portland, the largest city in the state. Chinese moved to Wasco County in the early 1880s to work on the construction of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company along the Columbia River. In 1870, 27 Chinese lived in Wasco County; by 1880, there were 1,158.

After gold was discovered in northeastern Oregon in the 1860s, hundreds of Chinese laborers found employment in the mines of Grant and Baker counties. Increased industrial production throughout the state, including the development of the salmon canning industry along the lower Columbia River in the 1880s, created a boom in Chinese population in Clatsop County (see census numbers ).

With the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which banned Chinese immigrants from entering the United States, Chinese populations began to dwindle. As gold mining and salmon canning production decreased, Oregon’s Chinese population gravitated to Multnomah County, where workers found employment as domestic servants, household or restaurant cooks, barbers, laborers, and business owners.