In the high desert of southwestern Wyoming, the town of Rock Springs has long worn the moniker "Home of 56 nationalities." But this year, the community took a bold step in confronting a dark chapter of its past, unveiling a striking new monument to commemorate one of the deadliest episodes of anti-immigrant violence in American history—the 1885 Rock Springs massacre. The dedication of the seven-foot-tall bronze statue, named "Requiem," marks the 140th anniversary of the tragedy and signals a turning point in how the town remembers its complex, multicultural roots.
The story of Rock Springs is, in many ways, the story of America’s westward expansion. In the 1860s, Union Pacific’s discovery of rich coal deposits drew thousands of immigrant laborers—Chinese, European, and others—to the region, eager to work the mines and help lay the transcontinental railroad. Yet, beneath the town’s proud celebrations of diversity, a painful history lingered in the shadows. On a September day in 1885, simmering labor tensions in the Union Pacific coal mines erupted. A mob, made up largely of European migrants, attacked Rock Springs’ Chinatown, burning homes and businesses to the ground. Twenty-eight Chinese residents were killed, and fourteen more were injured—a massacre that stands as one of the gravest acts of anti-Chinese violence in the United States.
For decades, the massacre was marked only by a small plaque affixed to a boulder, tucked away on a grassy median and easily overlooked by passersby. But over Labor Day weekend in 2025, the town gathered at the site of the old Chinatown to dedicate a new, far more prominent memorial. According to NPR, more than 200 attendees joined Rock Springs Mayor Max Mickelson and the town council for the unveiling of "Requiem," a statue depicting a Chinese miner standing amidst the ruins, clutching the tattered remnants of a ceremonial dragon flag. “A memorial like this one is long overdue,” Mayor Mickelson declared during the ceremony, reading from a prepared statement. He was joined by local students, who now learn about the massacre in school, and by members of the county’s two history museums, which helped raise funds for the project.
The timing of Rock Springs’ new monument is striking. As NPR noted, the dedication comes at a moment when the national political climate is growing more hostile to immigrants. Sweetwater County, which includes Rock Springs, voted 76% for President Trump in the 2024 election—a president who, since his reelection, has both ramped up immigration enforcement and publicly called for the removal of what he considers unflattering accounts of U.S. history from public life. This summer, Sweetwater County renewed its contracts with ICE, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The Wyoming Highway Patrol and National Guard have also increased their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Mayor Mickelson, himself a 2024 Trump voter and self-described “Old School Republican,” finds himself at odds with the anti-immigrant fervor sweeping his party. “As someone who is a descendant of immigrants that came to this country from Europe, I find it very frustrating that as a country we have decided to take an anti-immigrant stance,” he told NPR. Mickelson insists that the crackdown on immigrants wasn’t what he voted for, expressing a preference for law enforcement resources to be directed toward fighting drug trafficking and human trafficking, which he says have recently plagued his town. “We have real problem areas where those resources would be better put than tracking down somebody who is here working, putting up stucco,” he said. Mickelson also emphasized the ongoing importance of immigrant labor to Rock Springs, pointing out that nearly 20% of the population is now Hispanic or Latino, according to the Census Bureau. “We don’t love America any more than those people. They worked really hard to get here,” he said.
For many residents, the new monument is not just a symbol of remembrance, but also an act of reckoning and reconciliation. Over the summer, a team of Grinnell College researchers from Iowa spent weeks excavating the site of the old Chinatown, searching for physical traces of the massacre. Led by Professor Laura Ng, the team uncovered a “burn layer” in the soil—a distinct stratum marked by pottery sherds, animal bones, an ornamental door handle, and a charred wooden beam from one of the destroyed buildings. “Because of this, there’s going to be a layer that is very distinctive in the archaeological record,” Ng explained to NPR, standing four feet deep in a trench at the dig site and guiding her students as they mapped out the foundations of lost homes and shops.
The 1885 massacre left deep scars, not just on the landscape but on the families who lived through it. Yet, for many descendants, the details of what happened—and their own personal connections to the tragedy—remained hidden for generations. Ricky and Grace Leo, who grew up in Rock Springs, only learned in 2019 that nearly half of the 28 people killed were from their family clan in China, including direct relatives. “We didn’t know that we were related to the people that died in the massacre,” Grace said. The Leos became deeply involved in the 140th anniversary commemoration, helping to organize lectures, traditional blessing rituals, and cooking demonstrations in the days leading up to the statue’s unveiling.
Other descendants also traveled to Wyoming for the ceremony, some discovering their ties to the massacre only weeks before. Robert Lew, a California resident, learned at age 75 that his great-grandfather had lived in Rock Springs and survived the violence of 1885. “In terms of [learning about] my great-grandfather and 1885 in the massacre, that was only two weeks ago, three weeks ago,” Lew told NPR. His daughter, Beth Lew-Williams, is a noted scholar of Chinese-American history. At the commemoration, Lew spoke with a young Rock Springs resident who expressed relief that the community was finally confronting its past. “It’s just amazing, very inspirational,” Lew said. “And made me feel really good about our country.”
For Rock Springs, the journey toward acknowledging its full history is ongoing. The town’s International Day celebration, held for more than a century, continues to highlight the contributions of dozens of nationalities to the region’s growth. But the new monument, and the stories unearthed by archaeologists and descendants alike, serve as a powerful reminder that progress comes not from forgetting the past, but from facing it honestly—no matter how painful it may be. As the bronze miner stands watch over the site of old Chinatown, Rock Springs signals its willingness to remember, to reconcile, and, perhaps, to lead by example in a time of national division over who belongs and whose stories deserve to be told.
