Dayton Chinatown

Dayton is the site of Nevada’s first China Town.  By the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from China, along with immigrants from Japan and Korea, moved to the United States, They were pushed by economic disruption in their home countries and pulled by the promises of gold and employment in the Rocky Mountain West.

The Dayton Chinese were hired by Edward Rose in August 1857 to dig the four-mile Rose Ditch from the mouth of the Carson River west of town to the miners working the placers at the entrance to Gold Canyon.  Despite discrimination, the promise of jobs compelled the Chinese to stay.  They mined in Gold Canyon and settled along the Carson River in this area.  The community continued to be an important hub for Chinese Americans in Nevada into the 1880s.

STATE HISTORICAL MARKER NO.  163

STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE