#point molate

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Come And Get It by Lee Greengrass Via Flickr: Point Molate, Richmond, CA

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Point Molate: Viewing Remains of the Era of Chinese Shrimp Camps on San Francisco Bay 

According to the National Park Service, “the Chinese shrimp camp near Point Molate in Richmond was part of nearly 30 such camps that once flourished around San Francisco Bay.  Racial hostility, discriminatory laws, and environmental degradation caused the demise of the once thriving Chinese shrimp fishery.”

However, Fong Wan’s Richmond shrimp camp at Point Molate in Richmond, California, operated from 1934 until the early 1940s.  Fong Wan (1883-1968) had financial interests in hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, laundries, real estate, and a rice field in addition to being a very successful herbalist in Oakland, California. His son, Calvin Fong, has been assisting archaeologists and local historians.  

 A promotional placard for herbalist, shrimp camp operator, and business entrepreneur Fong Wan during his days as the impresario for Club Shanghai, a competitor to his rival Charlie Low’s nightclub, Forbidden City.  Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library. For a June 1949 profile of Fong Wan see here: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/fongwan1.html

 The full story about the Chinese shrimp camp at Point Molate remains to be told but Kelly Fong, a lecturer in Asian American Studies at UCLA, and her colleagues such as Prof. Laurie Wilkie at Cal are writing new chapters in what is known about Point Molate and other shrimp camps around the San Francisco Bay.  

 A joint UCLA-UC Berkeley team of scholars and students survey the site of a Chinese shrimp camp at Point Molate in Richmond CA on April 23, 2022.  Photograph by Doug Chan

On April 23, 2022, I had the opportunity to meet Fong, Wilkie, and participants from Wilkie’s archaeology class at UC Berkeley to observe measurements of the remnants of a brick oven that had been partially excavated from the shoreline at Point Molate Beach Park.  

 Kelly Fong, Ph.D or UCLA’s Asian American Studies center observes Dr. Laurie Wilkie taking measurements of what Wilkie believes are the remnants of a brick oven used to process shrimp at the Chinese shrimp camp on Point Molate in Richmond CA, on April 23, 2022.  Photograph by Doug Chan

Photographs by Doug Chan, April 23, 2022. 

While Drs. Fong and Wilkie took measurements and examined the remnants of what they believed to be a brick oven, the Cal students walked along the beach at Point Molate in a line with pink flags where artifacts such as porcelain shards could be seen among the sand and pebbles.

Flag identifying the location of a possible artifact on the beach at Point Molate in Richmond CA on April 23, 2022.  Photo by Doug Chan

 The view from the Point Molate beach at low tide.  Cal professor Laurie Wilkie hypothesized that the more readily-exposed patches of sand and other materials could have been either the result of the deliberate building up of such materials for the construction of piers or the natural locations for piers and other structures.  

Proper excavations of the Point Molate and other Chinese shrimp campsites around the Bay Area warrants state support to preserve and understand the legacy of the pioneer Chinese shrimpers on the bay.  As the public awaits the release of additional findings, the reading of the anecdotal accounts must suffice.  One such account of Chinese shrimp camp operation may be found in a portion of Judith K. Dunning’s oral histories for Richmond, California.  In one such oral history, Dunning interviewed longtime Richmond residents Harry and Marguerite Williams (https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb2j49n7wr;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00004&toc.depth=1&toc.id=div00004&brand=oac4). The excerpts from Mrs. Williams oral history that touch on the Richmond camp are reprinted as follows:

 Dunning:  I think we have an addition here. [Mrs. Williams signals to speak]

Tell her about how the Chinese used to put the shrimp out there on Cutting Boulevard.

Do you want to know about that?

Dunning:  Certainly. We'll be flexible.

You're still taping it?

Dunning:  Yes.

There used to be a Fong Wong shrimp camp. I'll start at the shrimp camp, and I'll work up towards Cutting.  Fong Wong shrimp camp was the name of it. Do you know where Lauritzen Channel is? It's right at the foot of Third Street. It's a little body of water that comes almost up to Cutting. That's Lauritzen Channel there. The Santa Fe Channel—that's that main channel in front of it—it goes right down to that Point San Pablo Yacht Club. That's the end of it. That main channel is the Santa Fe Channel. That little outlet that backs up there to almost Cutting at Third is called Lauritzen Channel.

The Fong Wong shrimp camp was right at the corner there, just prior before you go into Lauritzen Channel. The reason why I recall that, the Chinese had that area and they had two or three fishing boats. . . .

A Chinese fishing boat at China Camp.  Photographer unknown (from the collection of the Marin History Museum).

Chinese junk, c. 1890.  Photographer unknown from the Martin Behrman collection.

“Shrimp Fishermen” c. 1897.  Photographer unknown (from the collection of the Bancroft Library and the Chinese Historical Society of America).

They were processing shrimp. They had these big vats.  They would just take them all out in the back, to get their net or whatever, and they poured them in these vats, and they're steaming vats. One Chinese fellow fell into that, fell in one.

I heard the sirens and everything as a kid, since I lived over here on Third Street which was only a block off of Cutting. We all ran down there, but they had pulled the old fellow out of the vat and took him off. Do you know where the Channel Lumber Company is?

Dunning:  Yes.

This is before the Channel Lumber Company was there. That was nothing but a vast field where the Channel Lumber Company is, all that area was a field, all mud flats then. The Chinese would set out their trays with the shrimp right up to the sidewalk, clear down by that little Richmond Yacht Club. You know where that boat works is? Well, just this side of it. They had trays all out there with dried shrimps and all of that. No fence, no nothing. Back in those days, they didn't—

Dunning:  What days are we talking about? About how old were you at that time?

I must be around nine or ten years old.

Fourteen. You lived over here when you were sixteen.

Dunning:  It was in the thirties, around the 1930s?

Shrimper with a carry pole and two baskets of shrimps. Shrimp shells drying on the grounds of the fishing locale, c. 1910.  Photographer unknown (from a private collector).

 Chinese shrimper sweeping shrimp shells, c. 1910. Photographer unknown (from a private collector).

Yes. They would lay these shrimps to dry just like you do to process prunes or apricots, something like that, right next to the sidewalk there. A lot of times I would go down and get some of those shrimps off it. You would just walk right over like that, like you were going to pick a paper up, and I would get a bag of them. My mother would fix that shrimp with rice. You had to survive back in the thirties.

Man and women picking through shrimp shells at Hunters Point, c. 1910.  Photographer unknown (from a private collector).

Dunning:  Would you actually buy them, or just kind of sneak on over?

You know better than that. I pilfered them.

Dunning:  That's a nice word for it.

Yes. I wasn't the only one. Everybody did it. You had to stay alive. You had to survive. We had a lot of not-to-be-sold stuff and everything. You know what I mean. If you're hungry, you're hungry. That's the way it was. Not only me, but all the white kids and Mexican kids, families that lived around that area, we all done that.

Dunning:  The Chinese helped a lot of people get through the Depression?

Oh, yes. That way they did.

Dunning:  Did they ever rebel against this feeling of "let it happen?"

No. I guess they understood. They weren't missing that much anyway. I don't know whether those were the rejects they ground up and put them in chicken feed or what. They dried the shrimp. They got good and hard. You had to soften them up in water, or whatever way they did it, and make a meal.

Dunning:  Where would the Chinese be living?

That never occurred to me. They probably lived in around that camp there. I don't recall that much of it. Just down from that they had another fishing fleet with about three or four boats.

“A Chinese Fishing Village” from The Wave magazine.  The presentation of photos printed on the page is misleading, in that the images are not limited to the San Francisco Bay Area and instead show various locations in California.  The photo at the lower right corner of the page is an Arnold Genthe photo (mistitled by Genthe as “The Butcher”) taken on Fish Alley in San Francisco Chinatown.

In its landmark syllabus, A History of the Chinese in California, the editors of the Chinese Historical Society of America wrote about the shrimp industry on San Francisco Bay as follows:

”The shrimp industry in California was one dominated by Chinese during most of the period it flourished. In 1871 Chinese fishermen were already reported using bag nets imported from China and taking great quantities of shrimps from San Francisco and Tomales Bays.  And by 1880, California led among the eight shrimp-producing states.

“For most of the life of this industry, San Francisco Bay was the center of activity, the Tomales Bay camps having been abandoned by the 1890’s.  The industry gave employment to many Chinese. One source stated that several hundreds were engaged in shrimp fishing on San Francisco Bay in 1874-1875.

“The number of shrimp camps on San Francisco Bay for those years follows:

NUMBER OF CHINESE SHRIMP CAMPS ON SAN FRANCISCO BAY

Year         No.

1897        16 1910        19 1930        14 1969        * _______________ *Vestiges of one at China Camp, Martin County.

“Some of these camps bought the catch outright from independent fishermen for processing; in others the camp, fishing and shore equipment were owned by companies who then hired fishermen to work for them. There were also owner-companies which would lease the camp, vessel and equipment to others to operate.  Each camp or individual fisherman had fishing rights to certain areas in the shrimp beds which were mutually recognized and respected.

”A report in July 1897 gave the following description of the Chinese shrimpers:

“The . . . boat is of Chinese make and pattern and is 40 feet long by 10 feet on the beam, it carries a 30-foot mast, which bears a typical Chinese sail. The crew is invariably made up of five men. The fishing is done by means of bag nets made in China. . . . Each net is about 20 feet across its mouth, and narrows quickly into a narrow bag about 40 feet long. . . .

“Chinese junk ‘Amoy’ in Richardson Bay - Sausalito.  Photographer unknown.

“Each boat operates from twenty to thirty nets, which are set on the bottom with their mouths against the current. . . . The nets are set, ... usually at low tide and taken up again at the next high tide....

“The shrimps when brought into the camp are first boiled in large open vats [filled with salt water] .... After boiling [for about 30 minutes] they are spread out on the ground to dry- . . .”  It took 15 pounds of fresh shrimps to make one pound of dried meat. The wholesale price in 1882 for fresh shrimp was 3 cents per pound, and 5 to 8 cents per pound for dried shrimp meat.

Chinese shrimpers processing their catch from San Francisco Bay, c. 1900. Photographer unknown (from the collection of the Online Library of California).

“Since the quantity of shrimp taken was far in excess of the local demand for fresh shrimp, the major part of the catch was exported in dry form. In 1880 the amount exported to China, Japan and the Hawaiian Islands was estimated to be not less than $100,000 in value, consisting of approximately 1,000,000 pounds in meats and shells.

“The efficient fishing methods used by the Chinese shrimpers brought charges that the Chinese fishing methods were destroying young smelts.   Efforts were nude to curtail the activities of the shrimp industry.  In 1901 legislation was enacted making May, June, July, and August of each year a closed season for taking shrimps.  The frankly expressed hope was that the interrupted season would force the shrimp camps to close and the experienced crews to leave for other employment, so that when the season reopened, there would be difficulty in getting trained hands.

“Subsequently in 1905 legislation was passed prohibiting the exportation of dried shrimps and shrimp shells out of the state.

Aerial view of Hunters Point, c.1910. Photographer unknown (from a private collection).  This aerial view looking southwest depicts two dry docks at Hunters Point and an undeveloped hill. The Chinese shrimp camp can be seen in the cove at left.

“Actually, all these restrictions did not kill the shrimp industry in San Francisco Bay, for there were still 14 shrimp camps lingering in 1930.” [It remained for industrial pollution of the Bay during and after World War II to give the industry its coup de grace.]

Hunters Point Shrimp Camp, Apr 20, 1939. Photographer unknown (from a private collection).  After seven decades of operations on the San Francisco Bay, the Chinese shrimp camp was destroyed by city's Department of Health. Dry docks appear in the background.

When the CHSA editors wrote their summary of the shrimp industry in 1969, they had omitted to report that the City of San Francisco effectively ended the role of the Chinese shrimp industry prior to WW II.  

Hunters Point Shrimp Camp, Apr 20, 1939. Photographer unknown (courtesy of a private collector). By the time this photo was taken the San Francisco Department of Health had closed the Chinese shrimp camp.

The city’s health department on April 20, 1939, burned the remaining shrimp camp in Hunters Point to clear the land for the future Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

Hunters Point Shrimp Camp, Apr 20, 1939. Photographer unknown (courtesy of a private collector). The San Francisco Department of Health burns down the remaining structures of the Chinese shrimp camp.

The destruction of the higher-volume, Hunters Point shrimp processing camp effectively brought to an end to what the San Francisco Chronicle asserted had been a 70 year-old maritime tradition on the bay.  

“Chinese Fishing Village At South Foot” c. 1859.  Oil on canvas by Matilda F. Mott (from the collection of the California Historical Society).

“Chinese Fisherman”  Photographer unknown (from the collection of the Bancroft Library).

Historian Phil Choy of the Chinese Historical Society of America contributed to this short video about Chinese shrimpers on the bay for KQED Public media.

[updated: 2024-10-20] 

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Unai San Martin. Branches. Point Molate. 2011

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Photo: "Elevator Shaft"

Elevator at a former Northern California Navy fuel depot in use from 1941 through 1995. 

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Photo: "Emergency Cot"

Cot inside an emergency shelter at a former Northern California Navy fuel depot in use from 1941 through 1995. 

(Print - http://smu.gs/1gmc5K3 )