{"nrhp_refnum":"90000151","name":"Chinatown","other_names":["Chinatown Archeological Site"],"category":"site","location":{"address":"Brockton and Tequesquite Aves.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Riverside","county":"Riverside County","state":"CA","lat":33.97649108300004,"lon":-117.38561209299996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1990-03-01","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Historic - Non-Aboriginal","Agriculture","Asian","Social History"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 2.5-acre archeological site at Brockton and Tequesquite Avenues in Riverside, California, that was the location of Riverside's Chinatown, a village of Chinese immigrants occupied from 1885 into the 1930s.","why_significant":"The site holds buried remains of a rural Chinese village that housed residents and businesses and supported the local citrus industry through labor, laundry and vegetable gardening. Excavations in 1984-85 recovered more than three tons of artifacts, including very large stoneware and opium-related collections, that provide a major research resource on Chinese village life in California.","narrative":"Riverside's Chinatown occupied a hollow near the Tequesquite Arroyo, where Chinese immigrants settled in 1885 and lived until the 1930s. The village grew to about thirty buildings, including wooden and brick commercial structures, a temple, and a headquarters building for the Chee Kung Tong. Residents worked in citrus groves, ran laundries, and leased garden land along the Santa Ana River. No buildings survive on the roughly 2.5-acre site today. Fill dirt placed in the 1940s and 1950s covered much of the eastern area and helped protect it from relic hunters, and test work suggests brick foundations remain beneath it. Archeological work in 1984-85, led by the Great Basin Foundation after a citizens' campaign, recovered more than three tons of material. The finds include a very large stoneware collection, opium artifacts, animal bones, botanical remains and coins, now held at the Riverside Municipal Museum. The site is valued for what it can still reveal about rural Chinese communities in California.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"No standing structures remain; the site is mostly a bare field with pepper trees and a bamboo grove, partly covered by fill, with part used as a parking lot. Current function is listed as vacant/not in use.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:28.198954-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/90000151.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123860449","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":null},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/riverside-county/chinatown-90000151/"}