Locke

Locke is the last surviving rural Chinese American town in the United States, a tiny settlement on a levee road in the Sacramento Delta about 60 kilometres north of Stockton. The town was built in 1915 by Cantonese labourers who had been driven from the nearby town of Walnut Grove and created their own community on land they could only lease, never own. The main street — one block long — is lined with wooden buildings that have changed little in a hundred years: a few restaurants, a bar (Al the Wop's, a Delta institution), the Dai Loy gambling museum, and not much else.

The Locke Boarding House Museum documents the lives of the Chinese farmworkers who built and maintained the levee system across the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. The work was skilled and dangerous — levee collapses were frequent — and the Chinese contribution to making the delta farmable is given little recognition elsewhere. Locke is accessible by the Delta Loop scenic drive from Stockton, and by boat from the river.

things to do sight historic site
A story
Locke was founded in 1915 by Chinese labourers who had been excluded from living in nearby Walnut Grove after a fire destroyed the Chinese section of town and the white residents refused to allow it to be rebuilt. The Chinese community built their own town instead, on land leased from a local rancher. Locke never developed much beyond its original form, and what stands today — the unpainted wooden buildings, the narrow main street, Al the Wop's Bar — is substantially what was there a century ago.