Preserving the China House at Shinn Park

Doors Open 2024

We participated in Doors Open in 2023 with docent-led tours of the Shinn House Museum and the China House in the barnyard.

For Doors Open 2024, we have created an online walking tour of locations at Shinn Park that are significant to the Chinese workers who helped make the Shinn Ranch a success.

The "China House" AKA the "Chinese Bunkhouse"

Two exhibits tell the stories of home life and of the ranch life of the Shinn Ranch 

The other exhibit starts with a lone bunkhouse, the last bunkhouse of the Shinn Ranch China Camp, with a quince hedge in front of it. There is little written about it, so we have to search for details in ledgers and notes. We wondered: who lived here? what did they do? To answer that question, we had to search through the archives of Fremont to find who else lived here. The Chinese History Project created an exhibit "Chinese Roots: Sketches of Life in the Washington Township."