Record 51 of 74
Tem Ah Yeck and Ah Juy Died as Chinatown Burned
Narrative
On June 17, 1886, a fire destroyed nearly all of Truckee’s Chinatown, including the joss house, and killed Tem Ah Yeck and Ah Juy, who suffocated in a cellar. The Evening Mail reported that “piles of ashes are all that indicate where Chinatown existed,” while the few Chinese residents left in town were “packing up their effects and getting ready to leave.” Contemporary white papers blamed a stovepipe and even hinted at a Chinese plot, but the deaths occurred in the middle of Truckee’s anti-Chinese boycott and expulsion campaign, when the destruction of Chinatown completed the town’s purge of its Chinese community.