California’s Chinese History

I spent today flicking through a new book on photographs of the old Chinese community in California – Hannah Clayborn’s Historic Photographs of the Chinese in California. The book contains about 200 historic photographs gathered from various collections and includes images of the gold fields, the high Sierra railroad camps, lettuce fields and olive groves. More familiar are the images of San Francisco’s old Chinatown. A very well produced book.

By the way you can see a lot of images of California’s Chinese on the Online Archive of California’s Chinese in California virtual collection (click here).