Another look at Madera’s ‘Chinatown’

For The Madera Tribune

Tung Lin Leong, a young resident of Madera’s Chinatown is shown here in this 1903 photograph taken in Madera.

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The Chinese were among the first settlers in Madera. Most of them came here from the little town of Borden, four miles to the south. By the late 19th century a bustling Chinatown thrived in the area that had been set aside for them by the founding fathers, who fought to keep the Chinese on the west side of the railroad tracks.

There they operated their restaurants and laundries and a few smoked opium in underground tunnels. For a while some worked in the Sugar Pine Lumber Company mills and labored in the Madera brick factory, while others operated little truck farms on the outskirts of town. Together they became a significant economic force in town until the 1920s; then came the huge fire of 1923 and with it the demise of the Chinese presence in Madera. 

Before the conflagration, however, one Madera newspaper reporter took a last look at Chinatown and gave his readers what amounted to its obituary.