Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon

Around the turn of the twentieth century, and for decades thereafter, Oregon had the second largest Chinese population in the United States. In terms of geographical coverage, Portland s two Chinatowns (one an urban area of brick commercial structures, one a vegetable-gardening community of shanty dwellings) were the largest in all of North America.

Marie Rose Wong chronicles the history of Portland s Chinatowns from their early beginnings in the 1850s until the repeal of the Chinese Ex…