Chinatown, Denver

Denver Chinatown
Neighborhood of Denver
Wazee Street, former site of Chinatown, in LoDo
Site of commemorative plaque for Hop Alley / Chinese Riot of 1880
Coordinates: 39°45′14.22″N 104°59′38.76″W / 39.7539500°N 104.9941000°W / 39.7539500; -104.9941000
Country	United States
State	Colorado
City	Denver
Chinese settlement begins	1869
Area code	Area code 303

Chinatown in Denver, Colorado, was a residential and business district of Chinese Americans in what is now the LoDo section of the city. It was also referred to as "Hop Alley", based upon a slang word for opium.^[1] The first Chinese resident of Denver, Hong Lee, arrived in 1869 and lived in a shanty at Wazee and F Streets and ran a washing and ironing laundry business. More Chinese immigrants arrived in the town the following year. Men who had worked on the construction of the first transcontinental railroad or had been miners in California crossed over the Rocky Mountains after their work was completed or mines were depleted in California.

In Denver, most of the Chinese operated laundries, picking up a need for Denver's residents. Anti-Chinese sentiment escalated to mob rule in Chinese enclaves throughout the Western United States. On October 31, 1880, a white mob attacked Chinese people, their homes and their businesses, virtually destroying all of Chinatown. A mob of white men killed Sing Lee and assaulted dozens of other Chinese residents. ^[2] The Chinese immigrants were not compensated for their property loss. Some people moved away soon after the riot, others stayed and rebuilt Chinatown, but the residents continued to experience racial discrimination. By 1940, Chinatown had few Asian inhabitants and the district was razed as part of an urban renewal project.