The Rock Springs Massacre

What Happened?

In the summer of 1885, tensions in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, reached a breaking point. The Union Pacific Railroad relied heavily on Chinese miners—first recruited as strikebreakers—to keep coal production high and wages low. White miners, resentful of both the company’s power and the Chinese workers’ presence, joined the Knights of Labor union and threatened action.

On September 2, a fight in the No. 6 mine escalated into open violence. A mob of more than 100 white miners, armed with guns, knives, and clubs, descended on Rock Springs’ Chinatown. They looted homes, set buildings ablaze, and killed at least 28 Chinese miners, leaving 15 others wounded. Some victims burned to death in their homes; others were shot as they fled into the hills.

The massacre did not end with the killings. Survivors were forced into boxcars by U.S. troops, only to be brought back to Rock Springs under armed guard a week later. Instead of justice, they were ordered back to work. Sixteen white miners were briefly arrested, but no charges ever stuck, even though the murders happened in broad daylight and in front of witnesses.

The Rock Springs Massacre reflected national patterns. Anti-Chinese prejudice had been stoked for decades, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first federal law to ban immigration based on race. Across the West, “The Chinese Must Go” became a rallying cry for those who blamed immigrants for economic woes. Rock Springs revealed just how deadly that combination of racial animosity and corporate exploitation could become.

For the Chinese miners, the massacre was not only a personal tragedy but a public humiliation. Many returned to find their homes reduced to ashes, their dead unburied, and their presence still unwanted. Federal troops stayed in Rock Springs for over a decade to prevent further violence, but the message was clear: Chinese lives were disposable when profits and prejudice aligned.

Why It Matters

The Rock Springs Massacre shows how racism, economic exploitation, and political indifference intertwined to produce violence. It reminds us that exclusionary laws and racial scapegoating were not abstract policies but lived realities that left families destroyed and communities in ashes. To study Rock Springs is to confront a painful truth: that American democracy has too often defined who belongs by who can be excluded—and that the echoes of this violence still shape debates on immigration and labor today.