The Rock Springs massacre, also known as the Rock Springs riot, occurred on September 2, 1885, in the present-day United States city of Rock Springs in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. The riot, and resulting massacre of immigrant Chinese miners by white immigrant miners, was the result of racial prejudice toward the Chinese miners, who were perceived to be taking jobs from the white miners. The Union Pacific Coal Department found it economically beneficial to give preference in hiring to Chinese miners, who were willing to work for lower wages than their white counterparts, angering the white miners. When the rioting ended, at least 28 Chinese miners were dead and 15 were injured. Rioters burned 78 Chinese homes, resulting in approximately $150,000 in property damage (equal to $ in 2020 terms).
Tension between whites and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th-century American West was particularly high, especially in the decade preceding the violence. The massacre in Rock Springs was one among several instances of violence culminating from years of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, but not before thousands of immigrants came to the American West. Most Chinese immigrants to Wyoming Territory took jobs with the railroad at first, but many ended up employed in coal mines owned by the Union Pacific Railroad. As Chinese immigration increased, so did anti-Chinese sentiment on the part of whites. The Knights of Labor, one of the foremost voices against Chinese immigrant labor, formed a chapter in Rock Springs in 1883, and most rioters were members of that organization. However, no direct connection was ever established linking the riot to the national Knights of Labor organization.
In the immediate aftermath of the riot, United States Army troops were deployed in Rock Springs. They escorted the surviving Chinese miners, most of whom had fled to Evanston, Wyoming, back to Rock Springs a week after the riot. Reaction came swiftly from the era's publications. In Rock Springs, the local newspaper endorsed the outcome of the riot, while in other Wyoming newspapers, support for the riot was limited to sympathy for the causes of the white miners. The massacre in Rock Springs touched off a wave of anti-Chinese violence, especially in the Puget Sound area of Washington Territory.
Background
Chinese immigration to the United States at that time was neither uniform nor widespread. J. R. Tucker, writing for The North American Review in 1884, stated that the vast majority of the nearly 100,000 Chinese immigrants resided within the American West: California, Nevada, Oregon, and the Washington Territory. The U.S. Minister to China, George Seward, had asserted similar numbers in Scribner's Magazine five years earlier.
The first jobs Chinese laborers took in Wyoming were on the railroad, working for the Union Pacific company (UP) as maintenance-of-way workers. Chinese workers soon became an asset to Union Pacific and worked along UP lines and in UP coal mines from Laramie to Evanston. Most Chinese workers in Wyoming ended up working in Sweetwater County, but a large number settled in Carbon and Uinta counties. Most Chinese people in the area were men working in the mine. Racism against Chinese immigrants was widespread and largely uncontroversial at the time. Tucker, in the aforementioned 1884 article, referred to Asian immigrants as "...the Asiatic race, alien in blood, habits, and civilization". He also noted, "Chinese are the chief element in this Asiatic population."
In 1874–75, after labor unrest disrupted coal production, the Union Pacific Coal Department hired Chinese laborers to work in their coal mines throughout southern Wyoming. Even so, the Chinese population rose slowly at first; however, where there were Chinese immigrants, they were generally concentrated in one area. At Red Desert, a remote section camp in Sweetwater County, there were 20 inhabitants, of whom 12 were Chinese. All 12 were laborers who worked under an American foreman. To the east of Red Desert was another remote section camp, Washakie. An American section foreman lived there amongst 23 others, including 13 Chinese laborers and an Irish crew foreman. In the various section camps along the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad, Chinese workers far outnumbered any other nationality. Though the 79 Chinese in Sweetwater County in 1870 represented only 4% of the total population, they were, again, concentrated. In Rock Springs and Green River, the largest towns along the UP line, there were no Chinese residents reported in 1870.