Giant Powder Blew Up a Chinese Laundry and Killed Chinese Workers

Before dawn on April 14, 1885, two charges of giant powder were placed under a Chinese wash house on Front Street in Anaconda. The Anaconda Recorder and New Northwest reported that three Chinese men were killed outright and others badly injured. The Montana Record-Herald described the scene in devastating detail: “Your correspondent was among the first upon the ground. A heart-sickening scene presented itself. Two dead Chinamen blown out of shape and beyond recognition, another in agonies of death, a fourth mortally wounded, and four others more or less injured were lying among the logs and debris of a completely demolished building." The bombing destroyed both workplace and dwelling space and fits the purge-era pattern of anti-Chinese terror carried out in the dark by perpetrators who were never identified.