Routes and Roots is a web-based research and teaching tool that aims to make the history of Filipino Americans on the Central Coast more easily accessible to community members, students, and researchers. It provides a platform for bringing together materials (photographs, oral histories, research articles, and other documents) that are located in various institutions and with various individuals. The goal of this website is to create (1) an archive for Central Coast Filipino American history by gathering relevant resources and (2) an online exhibit of this history.
The concept behind this website was inspired by the South County Historical Society exhibit Routes and Roots that opened March 2010 at the IOOF Hall in Arroyo Grande, CA. The exhibit began with the help of a few members of the local Filipino American community who contributed their stories and their mementos relating to the Filipino pioneers who arrived to the Central Coast in the 1920s and 1930s. Once the exhibit opened, the exhibit hall provided a space for communities to come together and share the stories not many know about. And from there, the exhibit kept growing.Â
The hope is that this website will continue to provide that space for growing an archive of knowledge and for sharing the rich, but understudied, history of Asian American pioneers in this region. If you have any further knowledge about the materials presented on this website or if you have any photographs, artifacts, documents, or stories you would like to have digitally preserved, please contact Professor Grace Yeh in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's Ethnic Studies Department: gyeh@calpoly.edu.
Created in collaboration with South County Historical Society and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Ethnic Studies Department, and with the invaluable assistance of Filipino American communities on the Central Coast.
Credit Spring 2010 ES 322 students for their contributions, also credit students for collecting the oral histories.