(Lander, WY) – A building arrived at the Pioneer Museum early in September 2026. It was a Chinese laundry. The history of the building is mysterious and will eventually be discovered and displayed at the museum. It will be restored over the next year.
What is known is that Lander had a flourishing Chinese population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Workers, businessmen and families came to succeed in the Apple City.
There is more of a connection between San Francisco and Lander than one might imagine. The largest natural port on the American West Coast and a small town in the foothills of the Wind River Range don’t seem to have much in common, but they share a connection through two men with the same name and, initially, the same profession.
Wah Lee immigrated from China to the gold fields of the Folsom River area in 1849. Like men all over the globe, Wah Lee dreamed of striking it rich. He eventually did, but not with gold nuggets. Wah Lee opened the first Chinese laundry in the United States in the summer of 1851.
He hung a simple sign in English on a small building at the corner of Washington and Dupont Streets in the City by the Bay: ‘Wash’ng and Iron’ng’.
Wah Lee’s business expanded to 20 washermen working three shifts around the clock. He’d found gold in the suds of his wash buckets.
Jump ahead four decades, and another Wah Lee found himself in Lander, Wyoming.
Wah Lee was born in China in 1865. At just 14 years old, he boarded a steamer across the Pacific, landed in San Francisco, and took the Union Pacific as far as Evanston, Wyoming, before departing.
His life in Evanston remains a mystery, but he emerged in Lander in the 1890s as an importer of Chinese goods.
Another prosperous Chinese immigrant, and perhaps the most successful in Lander, was Yee Wing ‘Sam’ Sing, who started a laundry with Lop Chee in 1887. Yee Wing ‘Sam’ Sing would become a fixture in the Lander community as a businessman, rancher, and oilman.
Lander was a haven for Chinese people at a time when America was a hostile world for the Chinese in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Chinese had been hired by the Central Pacific to conquer the Sierra Nevada, which was considered impassable for the transcontinental railroad. Then they had the “audacity” to remain in the United States after the railroad was completed.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned immigration from China and denied citizenship to any Chinese citizen who came to America after 1879.
The Chinese of Lander and South Pass were exempt because they’d arrived in the United States well before the deadline.
The people of Lander welcomed the Chinese, and the miners at South Pass appreciated the hard work of the handful of Chinese miners working the gold fields. The 1880 census revealed six Chinese miners living in one house at South Pass City.
Ah Hawk, Non Hawk, Ghee Lup, Hing Gwong, Ah Sunn and Gon Chung worked as hard as any white miner, and more than most in the mines and gold-bearing streams of South Pass.
That wasn’t the case everywhere in Wyoming.
One of the worst racial incidents in American history came in Rock Springs on September 2, 1885.
The ‘Rock Springs Massacre’ led to the deaths of 28 confirmed Chinese immigrants, with some sources claiming as many as 50 victims.
The drunken mob that attacked the ‘Chinatown’ of Rock Springs that night resented the success of the Chinese immigrants, even though they were paid less than white workers. So, they killed them.
No one was ever convicted of the violent murders of these innocent people.
The Chinese rapidly departed from Rock Springs in the wake of the racist violence. Today, Rock Springs proudly identifies as a city of 38 different nationalities, with open arms to all, but its history remains sordid from this one incident.
In Fremont County, reactions to the Chinese were mixed.
In Lander, Chinese businessmen were treated as equals from 1886 to modern times. In neighboring Riverton, a much younger community, that wasn’t the case.
(Warning: The following news article example contains an offensive, derogatory term.)
Riverton Review – January 8, 1908
“A Chinese laundry man arrived here last Tuesday to locate, but was himself located by a committee and given eight minutes by our choice open-face watch to find a trail leading elsewhere. When a Chink lands here, he doesn’t land here for long, as this is a white man’s burg.”
Riverton was a railroad town, established just over a year earlier in late summer 1906. Lander was more established, and the Chinese population was regarded as industrious citizens of the Popo Agie Valley.
They were limited to working as domestic workers, laundry workers, and restaurant staff, while some women in the mining camps of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana worked as prostitutes.
It’s estimated that half of the prostitutes in Butte, Montana, in the late 19th century were ‘Celestials,’ as Chinese prostitutes were called.
Their lives were brutal, degrading and often short. Many were riddled with venereal disease, often beaten and sometimes murdered with no hope of justice. It was a terrible existence.
Lander was an oasis from this prejudice and an opportunity to thrive.
The first Sing Chee Chinese laundry did a brisk business on Garfield Street. Laundries did well in frontier towns where the population was largely young men. The Sing Chee business featured different rates for shirts, pants and smaller items. They also offered tailoring services and repaired clothes. They had scheduled wash days and specific times to pick up the cleaned laundry.
Bath houses were popular in the days before indoor plumbing, when hot water came at a premium. Those same cowhands, miners, and laborers spent their hard-earned wages, sometimes as often as once a week, for a soak at the Lee Bath House.
It made sense to expand this business since it shared similar technology. Water had to be heated in tubs for both bathing and laundry and the wastewater drained.
The Popo Agie ran just east of the business. It was used to drain away the wastewater.
While Sing and Chee were busy washing clothes, Wah Lee found a different route to prosperity.
Wah opened the ‘Chinese Store’ on Main Street in 1903. He featured items made in China and Japan. His most popular merchandise was high-quality silk, imported from his original homeland. He brought in tea as well and expanded to fine china tableware and curios.
It was three years before the Chicago and North Western railroad reached Lander. Getting products from China to Lander was often a quest. The order and payment had to reach China. The merchandise was then transported overland to ships, taken across the Pacific to San Francisco, then loaded onto Union Pacific freight cars. It was then hauled either from Green River over South Pass or to Rawlins and then up the Sweetwater Valley. It was a long way from same-day Amazon delivery.
Despite the challenges, Wah Lee’s business thrived. He began importing cigars and loose-leaf tobacco as well.
In 1906, he went into competition with Sing, opening the Lander Steam Laundry in November and selling his store to Mrs. W. E. Reed.
Lee ran the laundry until 1919, when he sold the building to hotel owner Jerry Sheehan, who opened a Ford dealership in it.
Sing was busy with other ventures.
Born in 1859, Sing came to the United States at 19. He began life in America working in a Chinese laundry, but upon arriving in Lander in 1886, he was hired by Hermon Nickerson as the cook at the Lander Hotel.
Sam was an excellent cook. His cooking was especially favored by Lander pioneer businessman Eugene Amoretti Sr.
Ghee Haw arrived in 1882.
He was listed as a servant in Sam Sing’s household in the 1890 census while employed as a laundryman, no doubt for Sam.
Sing took the earnings he made in the Lander Hotel kitchen and built a laundry and bathhouse in 1896. Sing charged 40 cents for a bath, about $24 today. It must have been worth it because business was brisk.
He used some of that profit to purchase 80 acres of farmland about three miles northeast of Lander near Wyopo. It turned out to be an excellent decision.
Sam began entering vegetables in the Fremont County Fair and won dozens of blue ribbons for his efforts.
Wind River Mountaineer – Feb. 15, 1907
OFFERING A GOOD BONUS.
“Wyoming has a unique promoter in Sam Sing, one of our laundrymen, who recently returned from Cheyenne where he had been trying to interest capital in the development of eighty acres of oil land. Sing is a Chinaman and has been a resident of Lander twenty odd years and purchased this land more than a decade ago for a mere trifle. Now the property is worth a good round sum. The Wyoming & Northwestern railroad has built directly across it. There is oil on all sides of the Sing tract and he is confident that wells sunk on his property will result in tapping a huge oil reservoir. He does not desire to dispose of his land but agrees to give any person sinking one or more wells there 55 per cent of the production of oil for a period of twenty years.”
In July 1908, Lop Chee, Sam’s old partner, took a year off and traveled back to China. His homeland had changed dramatically in his absence. The Boxer Rebellion of 1899 culminated in the Boxer Protocol, which removed much control of China from the Chinese, replacing it with foreign occupiers, mostly Europeans. After this first trip back, he did not return to China.
The oil companies came. Some were not so honest, thinking they could take advantage of a man with a strong Chinese accent. They couldn’t have been more wrong about Sam Sing.
He planted more than cabbage, endives, and onions.
Wyoming State Journal – November 25, 1912
Legal Notice
“To London Oil Company, an Arizona Corporation, whose office and usual place of business is Detroit, Michigan, (street address unknown) and, Detroit Trust Company, an Arizona Corporation, whose office and usual place of business is Detroit, Michigan, (street address unknown.
You will please take notice that Sam Sing, plaintiff, did, on the 7th day of October, 1912, file in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Second Judicial District, within and for Fremont County, Wyoming, his petition against you, London Oil Company, a corporation, and Detroit Trust Company, a corporation, defendants, for the cancellation of a lease of Lot 1, Sec. 34, Tp 34 N. & Lot 1, Sec. 3, Tp. 33 N. all in R. 99, W. of 6th P.M. in said County and State, now held by you and in which you claim an interest, for the reason that you have defaulted in carrying out the terms of said lease.
You are required to answer or otherwise plead to said petition on or before Nov. 30, 1912, or said petition will be taken as true, and judgment rendered against you accordingly.
Sam Sing, Plaintiff.
First Publication Oct. 11, 1912.
Last Publication Nov. 15, 1912.”
Sam Sing won his case, and the London Oil Company had to pay up.
He was now a cattleman, an oilman, an entrepreneur, and a respected man in Lander.
His cattle herd grew to 1,500 head.
Sing seemed to have luck wherever he went. In 1913, Sam discovered a nearly three-foot-thick vein of soapstone on his ranch. Soapstone at the time was worth about $75 a ton in today’s money. Sam leased it to interested miners and made a nice profit.
By 1917, Sing realized he could generate more profit by drilling for oil himself. He incorporated the Oriental Oil Company and began local production.
Hudson Miner, Nov. 16, 1917
ORIENTAL BOILER ARRIVES
“The drill on the Sam Sing ranch will soon be pounding its way to the pool of oil which all think lies beneath the surface of the Oriental Oil Co’s holdings. The boiler and other complements arrived Saturday night last and have been installed this week. The well should be spudded in within a few days unless something unforeseen happens.”
Oil rigs were coal-powered in those days. Oil was hauled by wagon, and later by truck, to the railroad, where it was loaded into tank cars. When Sam began production, it was a long haul to Lander before they could cross the Popo Agie.
Ever the shrewd businessman, Sam Sing granted a right-of-way for the Wind River Refining Company to build a bridge across the Popo Agie. Access to the bridge for Sam’s cattle, oil, and soapstone interests was part of the deal. He cut his route to the railhead by four miles.
By 1925, Yee Wing Sing was 66 years old. His health began to fail.
An obituary appeared in all the Lander and Hudson newspapers, but not across the valley in Riverton.
Wyoming State Journal – July 9, 1926
Sam Sing, Chinaman, well known in Lander, died at his home on Main Street, Monday, July 4, after an illness of several weeks.
“He had been unable to attend to his laundry business for some time.
Sam Sing was a good citizen. As one business man said yesterday as the news was passed that Sam had died, “No better citizen ever lived in Lander. If they were all like him, there would be no policemen, no courts and everyone would be happier.”
This simple tribute to the Chinaman who had lived in Lander for more than 40 years spoke volumes. He never molested anyone, he was sober, quiet, industrious, and often wronged by never answering back.
Forty or more years ago, he came here to cook at the Lander Hotel. This job he held in Lander for many years. He saved his money, invested it in cattle, and at one point, owned more than 1,500 head. He purchased considerable Lander property, and in addition to his home, owned a number of lots and a farm near Wyopo.
His nephew, Ohy Wye, came here from St. Paul two weeks ago and ministered to his needs. The funeral will be held Friday following a brief service at the Methodist Church. The body will be buried on the hill overlooking the little city where his life was spent.”
Sam’s grave is on top of the hill above Lander at Mount Hope Cemetery. It is one of only a handful with Cantonese inscriptions on their headstones.
A handful of Chinese immigrants found a home in the Lander Valley at the end of the 19th century, at a time when their fellow countrymen were hounded, ridiculed, and driven out of towns across the West.
Lander was a haven, and these people helped make it thrive.