Walnut Grove Japanese-American Historic District

Walnut Grove's Japantown occupies about five acres on the east side of the Sacramento River and holds 33 buildings, most put up around 1916 after a fire in 1915 leveled more than 80 buildings in the town's Asian section. Japanese carpenters and builders from San Francisco, Stockton and Sacramento volunteered their labor, and families drew lots from a hat to decide where to build. The simple wood-frame structures are mostly two stories with false fronts, recessed entries, storefront windows and upper-floor porches, with shops below and family quarters above. Uses included groceries, boarding houses, bathhouses, restaurants, a language school and a Methodist church. The district served seasonal farm laborers across the Delta and became the center of Japanese American life in the region until wartime relocation in 1942. Several buildings burned during the war, leaving empty lots now used as gardens. The streetscapes have changed little, and buried deposits from the earlier Asian community date from 1880 to 1915.