Faded Memories, Forgotten Streets: The Fall and Rise of Salinas Chinatown

First the Chinese came
Then the Japanese
Then the Filipino
Then everybody left
They might come back.

Soledad is the Spanish word for solitude. And indeed, Soledad Street in Monterey County has long lived up to its name. Few people pass through, and even fewer remember what it once was. The only signs of human activity are the crumpled Target receipts and paper straws scattered across the pavement, remnants of a town that time left behind.

But for those who venture down this rocky path, a different story emerges. The landscape abruptly shifts. Confucian churches, Buddhist temples, a hotel bearing the Chinese character for "Light" (光), and a weathered building with a sign that reads "Republic Café." These Eastern icons, out of place amidst California’s suburban sprawl, whisper of a past that once flourished here.

This was once one of the oldest and most enduring Chinatowns in the United States.

The story begins in the 19th century when Chinese immigrants, drawn by the promise of gold, arrived in California. Many stayed, finding work in agriculture and industry. By 1873, the Chinese had established their own distinct neighborhood in Salinas, accounting for about 10% of the city's population at that time. However, in 1893, the original Chinatown was destroyed by fire. Undeterred, Chinese merchants established a new Chinatown on Soledad Street that same year.

As additional Chinese laborers were barred from immigrating due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, industrialist Claus Spreckels sought another workforce. In 1898, he brought Japanese laborers to work in his sugar beet operations. They settled on Lake Street, adjacent to Chinatown, and in 1925, they established a Buddhist temple on California Street.

Then came the Filipinos, drawn by the growing row crop industry in the Salinas Valley. By 1920, they had formed a lodge and a community church to the east of Chinatown. In the 1930s, Salinas Chinatown became home to the Philippines Mail, the longest-running Filipino newspaper in the United States.

For decades, this patchwork of cultures thrived. Businesses lined the streets, families built lives, and a once-marginalized community found strength in unity. But prosperity would not last.

In the 1950s, after the invalidation of the California Alien Land Laws, many Chinese families moved out, seeking better opportunities elsewhere. Yet, the neighborhood remained a hub for immigrant families until the 1970s, when urban planning decisions, including the construction of a new overpass and the conversion of two-way streets to one-way, effectively isolated Chinatown from the rest of Salinas.

Isolation bred hardship. Businesses shuttered. Residents left. The streets, once filled with voices speaking Cantonese, Tagalog, and Japanese, grew silent. In their place came vagrancy, drug dealing, and crime. By 2012, reports estimated that up to 150 drug deals occurred on Soledad Street every day. Prostitution, robbery, and even murder became part of its dark reality.

As I stand in front of the Republic Café building, faded red paint peeling from its walls, I hear footsteps behind me. An older woman, perhaps in her seventies, walks slowly along the cracked pavement, a cane tapping lightly with each step. She stops and gazes at the abandoned storefronts.

“Used to come here with my father,” she says, her voice soft but certain. “Every Sunday after church, he’d bring me to Republic Café for peking duck.”

I turn to her. “You grew up here?”

She nods. “Not in Chinatown, but close. My father was a farmworker, one of the few who saved enough to open a little shop. He used to say, ‘You can tell how strong a place is by the smell of its kitchens.’” She chuckles to herself. “It smelled good here, once.”

We stand in silence for a moment, looking at the empty buildings. I ask if she thinks the neighborhood can come back.

She exhales slowly. “Maybe. Not the way it was, but something new. It’ll take time, though. This place has been sleeping for a long time.”

But the streets do not plan to stay like this forever.

Efforts to reclaim and restore Salinas Chinatown are underway. Moon Gate Plaza, a $39 million complex, now offers 90 affordable housing units and spaces for community organizations. The historic Republic Café building is being transformed into the Chinatown Cultural Center and Museum, an initiative led by the Asian Cultural Experience (ACE) organization. These projects aim to honor the legacies of the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino communities that once called this place home.

For now, Soledad Street remains quiet, waiting. But perhaps one day, the echoes of the past will no longer be whispers.

Perhaps, they might come back.