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Utah state historic preservation officer Christopher Merritt examines excavated floorboards from a Chinese home in the ghost town of Terrace, Utah. Between two and four Chinese railroad maintenance workers likely lived in this home, which would have been built around 1869. This is the first fully excavated Chinese worker home on the transcontinental railroad line.
Archaeologists excavating in a Utah ghost town have turned up a rare find: a house belonging to 19th-century Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad.
The house — now just a layer of floorboards scattered with artifacts such as Chinese coins and stoneware — is the first-ever completely excavated Chinese home on the transcontinental railroad. More than 11,000 immigrants from China helped build the railroad, which connected the Eastern lines in Iowa to the San Francisco Bay. But these workers are often left out of historical documents from the late 1800s, said Christopher Merritt, the state historic preservation officer with the Utah Division of State History. The presence of a Chinatown wasn't on any map of Terrace, for example.
"Being able to open up a whole house for the first time gives us a really interesting lens" on the Chinese railroad worker community, Merritt said.
More than 11,000 Chinese workers helped build the transcontinental railroad, according to Golden Spike National Historic Park in Utah. The workers endured six days a week of 10 to 12 hours of hard labor in both heat and cold. According to the Historic Park, they were initially paid less than other workers. Eventually their wages were raised to the same level, but the workers still faced discrimination and segregation. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
The bottom of a porcelain Chinese bowl from over a century ago looks like dishware found in China or Chinatowns around the world today. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
A tiny arm from a figurine found in Terrace. Archaeologists found between 10,000 and 20,000 artifacts at the ghost town site, which was abandoned by 1904. The remote location and the desert environment have protected these artifacts at the surface, though large materials like railroad ties were hauled away for scrap by the 1940s. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
Glass fragments are a common find at the Terrace ghost town site. Archaeologists conducted two digs here in 2020. The town had a population of about 500 at its peak, but many of the buildings were destroyed by a fire in the early 1900s. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
There are few surviving historical records of the Chinese community in Terrace, which was likely the third-largest in Utah at its peak. Census records put the population at 56 in 1870, just over 10% of the total population of the town, but may be an undercount. Most railroad records of employment were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, Merritt told Live Science. Artifacts like this Chinese coin reveal the location of Terrace's Chinatown for the first time. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
Ghost town
The town of Terrace materialized in far northwest Utah with the building of the railroad in the late 1860s. It was a railroad maintenance town, populated by 500 or so people at its peak. But in 1902, the railroad opened a cutoff route with a trestle across the Great Salt Lake, which meant workers didn't need to travel around the lake or pass by Terrace. By 1904, Terrace was gone.
A fire in the early 1900s erased much of the town's main street, but artifacts remained scattered on the ground. Looting and vandalism are common problems, Merritt said, but the artifacts represented a "time capsule of a boomtown," so state archaeologists desperately wanted to study and protect the site.
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The excavation of the Chinese workers' home. Only floorboards and a few vertical posts are left behind. The boards used to construct the home were probably surplus railroad material, according to state archaeologists.(Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
Utah state historic preservation officer Christopher Merritt examines excavated floorboards from a Chinese home in the ghost town of Terrace, Utah. Between two and four Chinese railroad maintenance workers likely lived in this home, which would have been built around 1869. This is the first fully excavated Chinese worker home on the transcontinental railroad line. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
Archaeologists and volunteers dig at the Terrace ghost town site in northwest Utah. The Chinese Railroad Workers Descendents Association was also involved with volunteering, touring the site, and advocating for its protection. In this remote location, looting is common, and people walking off with artifacts might not even understand that what they're taking is the only history left of the Chinese community in this area from the late 1800s. (Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
The dry desert conditions of northwest Utah preserve artifacts well -- even organic ones like melon seeds, peanut shells and Chinese dates. These remnants of Chinese railroad workers' diets suggest that the immigrants were still eating comfort food from home, even in remote Terrace.(Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
An old railroad trestle in northwest Utah. Terrace's fate was sealed with the railroad developed the Lucin Cutoff, a line that crossed the Great Salt Lake on a long trestle rather than skirting around the lake by places like Terrace. The cutoff opened in 1902, and Terrace was a ghost town by 1904.(Image credit: Christopher Merritt)
Working closely with the Utah-based Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association, the archaeological team conducted two digs at the site.
"The amount of material culture, artifacts on the ground, is staggering," Merritt told Live Science. Archaeologists collected 10,000 to 20,000 items that had been preserved by the dry desert climate. These items revealed something not on any map: the location of Terrace's Chinatown.
Chinese culture on the transcontinental railroad
The researchers could tell where the Chinese workers in Terrace lived based on artifacts such as Chinese coins, gaming pieces, Chinese porcelain bowl fragments and stoneware that would have been used to hold soy sauce and vinegar. From China, these goods would have crossed the Pacific by ship to San Francisco, where workers loaded them onto a train for a journey to this "podunk" little town, Merritt said. The archaeologists and volunteers at the dig even found melon seeds, peanut shells and Chinese dates preserved at the site.
The 1870 Census records 56 Chinese workers living in Terrace at the town's peak, Merritt said, but Census records often undercount minority and immigrant groups. It's possible that as many as 100 Chinese workers called the town a temporary home at its peak. There was no legal requirement for segregation between these workers and the town's white residents, he said, but discrimination and racism kept the two communities apart.
The researchers did, however, discover evidence of at least one Chinese business right on the main street. The type of business wasn't clear, but archaeologists found Chinese liquor jars, stoneware and porcelain in a building foundation. It may have been a grocery store, a laundry or even a restaurant, Merritt said.
"We don't know that answer yet, but at least now we have one fixed point that there was a Chinese presence on this main street in Terrace," Merritt said.
The researchers now plan to analyze more thoroughly the artifacts discovered at the site, hoping to reveal more stories of the workers who made the transcontinental railroad possible. Utah policymakers also hope to protect Terrace. State Rep. Karen Kwan, the president of the Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association, told KSL.com that she plans to introduce a resolution in the upcoming legislative sessions highlighting the importance of ghost towns like Terrace. New fencing and signage have also been erected to alert visitors to the identity of the site and to discourage looting.
Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
