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Show Not surprisingly, the first generation worked mainly at pick and shovel jobs on the railroads and in mines and smelters. Later they began moving into other kinds of work, including small businesses and the professions. The Chinese, for instance, first came to Utah in the late 1860s as laborers on the transcontinental railroad. After its completion in 1869, some of them remained here, mostly in Box Elder County, working as section hands on the railroad. Gradually they moved to other parts of the state, and many began to operate small businesses. By the 1880s Salt Lake, Ogden, and Park City all had Chinese laundries and restaurants and Chinese neighborhoods. By the early 20th century, a Japanese community had sprung up in Salt Lake City along a two-block area of First South between West Temple and 300 West. Within and around Plum Alley, which ran north and south between Main and State Streets connecting First and Second South, the Chinese developed a compact community of their own. Little Syria grew up around the area of Third South and 500 West, near the Denver and Rio Grande depot, and Italians were also concentrated on the west side of the city near the railroads, where many of them worked. The Bertolini Block, still standing today just south of the Salt Palace on West Second South, became their community center. Nearby, on a stretch of Second South between 400 and 600 West, was Greek-town. Within its two-block area were coffeehouses, grocery stores, rooming houses, and specialty stores that sold octopus, Turkish tobacco, olive oil, goat cheese, figs, and dates. Two newspapers served the community, one a Greek-language paper, the other in English. Similar ethnic neighborhoods existed wherever new immigrants settled, including smaller communities in the Salt Lake Valley like Magna, Bingham, and Midvale. These ethnic neighborhoods began to break up in the 1930s, largely because the U.S. Congress had passed legislation severely restricting further immigration. In addition, the city's immigrant population was no longer mainly young and male. In spite of their original intentions, most of the immigrants had not returned to their native lands, but had married, started families, and settled down to try to make a permanent life here. As they left the mines and smelters and moved into businesses and professions, they also began to move into other sections of the city. Today, little is left of the old ethnic neighbourhoods. Since the end of World War II, three additional waves of immigrants have come to the Salt Lake Valley. Between 1950 and 1970, more than 42,000 Spanish-speaking people arrived, and they have now become Utah's largest ethnic minority. Most of them are Mexican- Americans from New Mexico and other Southwestern states, but there have also been immigrants from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and South and Central America In addition, a large number of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans come to the state each year as temporary migrant workers. During the 1960s they numbered about 8000 each year. Hispanics have actually lived in Utah for some time, however, first around the turn of the century as shepherds and ranch hands in San Juan County. More arrived between 1910 and 1917, seeking to escape the upheavals of the Mexican Revolution. The 1920 census showed 1666 Spanish-speaking people in Utah, mostly in the Salt Lake Valley and primarily employed by mines, mills, and the railroads. In the 1960s, Polynesians from islands in the South Pacific began to arrive in Utah. Perhaps 12,000 have come in all, most of them settling in the Salt Lake Valley. The largest group is from Tonga and came mainly as Mormon converts. Others have arrived, though in much smaller numbers, from Samoa, New Zealand, Hawau, and Tahiti. In addition to religion, economic factors have played a role in their immigration here. In the 1960s, for example, unemployment in Tonga, excluding subsistence farming and fishing, was as high as 75%. Land was difficult to acquire, and inflation was high. The latest group of immigrants, those from Southeast Asia, began arriving in the mid-1970s after the long war in Vietnam ended. They include Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Thais, and Hmong. Of the 750,000 who immigrated to the United States, about 10,000 have come to Utah, settling mainly in the Salt Lake Valley. Most of them have been sponsored by American families, who have helped them find work and places to live. Many have been young people under the age of 16 who came alone or with relatives and wait for other family members to join them. Often the wait has been a long one. Life here has been at least as difficult for them as it was for earlier generations of immigrants. They work at basic entry level jobs and face culture shock as they try to adjust to a way of life vastly different from what is familiar. Like earlier immigrants, they rely on their own communities while they struggle to adapt to new ways and to build lives for themselves. And while it is hard to predict future immigration patterns, it seems likely that citizens of other nations will continue to make the Salt Lake Valley their home-enriching our lives with their distinctive cultures and traditions. page 4 |
