Chinese immigrants, most of whom were men, to meet the needs for agricultural and other cheap laborers to "hasten the development and early prosperity of the Territory". Hong Lee lived in a shanty at Wazee and F Streets and ran a washing and ironing laundry business. By the fall of 1870 there were 42 Chinese men and women living along Wazee Street, establishing what was first known as Chinaman's Row. Wazee was probably a
Cantonese name for "Street of the Chinese". It was located next to the
red-light district on Holliday Street, now Market Street. It was a very poor district, but it provided some safety, a shared cultural heritage, community support, and a place to buy and sell goods unique to their culture. Italians were similarly situated. They lived in a poor neighborhood along the
South Platte River between
Highland and downtown Denver called "The Bottoms". According to historian Robert Athearn, its residents adapted to living in a hovel because of "the strength of their old-world heritage and their religion". The town grew quickly, but did not have the infrastructure to manage the influx of people and public health issues. There were open sewers, trash-filled rivers, cows and pigs that freely walked the streets, and carcasses of dead cats and rats in the streets. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad,
tuberculosis patients
came to Colorado beginning in the 1870s for the dry, sunny climate and high altitudes. Colorado became the "sanatorium to the world" and the disease spread throughout the city. By the 1880s, 10,000 people in Denver had tuberculosis; this was one-third of the city's population. Dr.
Frederick J. Bancroft (who created Denver's public health system) claimed that Denver was one of the dirtiest cities in the country. The entire city was not clean, but ethnic enclaves for the Chinese, Italians, and the Irish were worse. There were efforts to use public opinion on health to oust the Chinese from downtown Denver. ''Further:
Frances Wisebart Jacobs § Denver's Jewish Hospital Association'' By 1880, there were 238 Chinese residents. Of those, 225 were men, most of whom did laundry or worked as cooks. Some of the 13 women were prostitutes. A Chinese consul visiting Denver estimated that it was more likely a total of 450 Chinese immigrants. At its peak, there were 980 people in 1890 or around 1,400 Chinese immigrants in Denver, which made it the largest enclave of Chinese people in the Rocky Mountains. Most of them lived in decrepit buildings in Chinatown. They had unique cultural rituals, like fireworks during the
Chinese New Year and long funeral processions through the streets of Denver. According to William Wei, a history professor at the
University of Colorado Boulder, "The American West is a vast territory and always suffered from an insufficient number of people to build it up. The Chinese were great workers, reliable and industrious." They took on jobs that others would not do, like working
placer mines searching for traces of gold from abandoned mines, or in Denver doing laundry. Laundry was considered women's work, but there were few women in Colorado at that time. Unlike other Colorado residents, most Chinese immigrants intended to save their earnings and retire back to China. The average stay in Colorado was six years. Located in a busy section of Denver, the Chinese had profitable businesses, like laundromats, or jobs in the service industry. The location, though, "also made them a visible minority in a racially charged society" during a period of anti-Chinese sentiment in the
Western United States. ==Racial discrimination and anti-Chinese riot of 1880==