| This site was built to preserve the legacy of the Chinese workforce in Oregon. The museum contains artifacts and displays that share some of the trials of everyday life these people went through. Kam Wah Chung, meaning "land of golden opportunity," was the name of a store the men operated in a stone trading post built in 1866. Now a state heritage site and park, the store operated from 1871 through the 1940s. Twenty years after the men died, the small building was reopened in 1977. Everything was just as Lung An and Doc Hay had left it: 500 boxes of Chinese herbs stacked on the shelves, bat wings and bear paws on the counter, tins of food in the storeroom, Doc's slippers were lined up under his bed and his Chinese shirts hung from nails on the wall. |
