09/02/2026
Today in history: September 2, 1885, the Rock Spring Mine Massacre.
On the morning of September 2, 1885, White miners and Chinese miners got into a fight in the No. 6 mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The White miners killed one Chinese miner and badly injured another. A foreman arrived and broke up the fight. However, tensions remained high. Instead of continuing to work, White workers went home to retrieve weapons.
By the afternoon, a mob of between 100-150 armed White men gathered and then split up to surround Chinatown. Women and children joined them as well. They began attacking Chinese people in their homes and on the streets, and set houses on fire. By the evening, twenty-eight Chinese miners were killed and fifteen injured. All of the houses in Chinatown were destroyed.
Following the massacre, the surviving 500 Chinese workers fled to nearby Evanston. It was a railroad town about 100 miles from Rock Springs that serviced locomotives. Many coal miners, including Chinese miners, lived in Evanston. The Chinese workers were eager to leave Wyoming. They asked their employer, the Union Pacific Railroad, for tickets and back pay owed to them. The company refused both requests. On September 9, 1885, federal troops took the Chinese workers to a train depot in Evanston and told them they were headed to San Francisco for safety. However, they were actually tricked into returning to Rock Springs and were returned there that evening. The Union Pacific Railroad demanded the Chinese workers get back to work. Many of them initially refused, but seeing no other option, they ultimately returned to work.
A deeper background story that set the framework in place for this event.
In 1870, many Chinese laborers began moving to the Rock Springs, Wyoming territory. (Wyoming became a state in 1890.) The Union Pacific Railroad, one of the two companies that built the Transcontinental Railroad, hired Chinese workers to work in the coal mines in Rock Springs. These coal mines powered the trains. By 1885, there were about 600 Chinese and 300 White miners working in the Rock Springs mines. White miners typically lived in downtown Rock Springs, while Chinese miners lived in the northeast of town in the area that became known as “Chinatown.”
Chinese laborers were willing to accept low wages. This meant that the Union Pacific Railroad kept wages low for everyone. White miners formed a union called the Knights of Labor. Their goal was to improve working conditions and increase wages by organizing strikes. The Knights of Labor blamed the Chinese workers for the low wages. They organized a strike in 1884. As a result of the strike, the Union Pacific Railroad planned to only hire Chinese workers. This increased the White miners’ resentment. Tensions between White and Chinese workers escalated. White workers began planning an expulsion of Chinese workers from the Wyoming territory.
The Rock Springs Massacre was not an isolated event. White workers in the region were emboldened after the massacre. Just a few months later, the Tacoma Riot broke out on November 3, 1885. A mob of around 500 people drove the Chinese community out of Tacoma, Washington and burned the city's two Chinatowns. In February 1886, a mob forced Seattle’s Chinese population out of town.
Sadly, violence against Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans are a part of U.S. history, as was violence against so many other emerging ethnic or racial minorities over time.
September 1, 2025. Nearly 200 people gathered to mark the 140th anniversary of the 1885 Chinese Massacre. The event included the unveiling of a seven-foot statue titled Requiem, created to acknowledge and remember the events of September 2, 1885, when violence broke out between white and Chinese miners in the city.
