Day 250: Sam Choy Brick Store, Angels Camp, California

📌APIA Every Day (250) - The Sam Choy Store was a brick building constructed in 1861 in Angels Camp, California, serving as a mercantile establishment for the local Chinese community during the Gold Rush period. Sam Choy, a prominent Chinese merchant, owned the store along with several other businesses in the town's Chinatown, including gambling houses. He operated as a significant economic intermediary, managing groups of Chinese workers contracted to local mine owners by providing essential supplies, controlling their finances, and collecting their wages.

Sam Choy lived in Angels Camp with his wife Leong and two daughters, Annie and Ellen, who were born in California. In 1883, the family returned to China, likely due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and increasing anti-Chinese sentiment. Over the subsequent decades, the building underwent multiple transformations, first becoming a bordello in the early 1900s and later serving as the Angels Camp Jail from the 1930s through the 1950s.

In 1984, the Sam Choy Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places, with the City of Angels Camp receiving a $50,000 grant for its preservation. The building represents an important piece of local history, documenting the economic and social role of Chinese immigrants in a typical Gold Rush-era California mining town. By 1922, most of the Chinatown buildings were vacant, with only the Luen Sing store remaining operational, marking the gradual decline of the Chinese community in Angels Camp.

LEARN MORE:

National Archives Catalog: Sam Choy Brick Store NRHP Form

Calaveras History: Sam Choy Store, Angels Camp

NoeHill Travels in California: National Register of Historic Places in Calaveras County

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