One occupation the Chinese in Southern Arizona found especially rewarding was truck gardening. The Chinese gardens west of the Santa Cruz River, in the area now occupied by Tucson’s Mission Gardens, are well known. Chinese gardeners were also associated with Arizona’s army forts, such as Fort Apache, Fort Huachuca, and Fort Lowell.
In 1862 a military post was established in Tucson by the California Column after they drove out the Confederate forces. That post was abandoned between July 1864 and July 1865. It was reestablished in Tucson and named Camp Lowell, indicating it was still considered a small, temporary installation. In 1872 it was relocated, either for sanitary reasons or because Tucsonans were tired of the soldier’s bad behavior, seven miles to the east of Tucson near the Rillito Creek on land formerly occupied by the Hohokam. It was renamed Fort Lowell, indicating it was considered a permanent military installation. It was also the administrative center of a large military reservation over which the U.S. military had jurisdiction. Until it was decommissioned in 1891, the fort played an important role in Arizona’s Apache Wars.
In the 1880 census 6 Chinese men were enumerated as living in Fort Lowell; 4 were servants, one had no occupation listed and 1 “Keeps a Restaurant.” On the Fort Lowell Military Reservation there 7 Chinese enumerated of which 6 were listed as “Works on Farm,” and 1 was listed as “Works in Laundry.” The Chinese who worked on the farm were the gardeners who supplied the soldiers with fresh vegetables. I wouldn’t be surprised if the gardens started the same year Fort Lowell was established but I don’t know for sure. By May 1884, the Arizona Daily Star reported that the six Chinese of Fort Lowell had 17 acres under cultivation, and in addition to supplying the military, they were also selling their fruits and vegetables in Tucson. After the fort was decommissioned, the gardeners continued to grow their crops to sell to customers in the city of Tucson. They lived near El Fuerte, the Mexican community that grew up in the ruins of the fort.
Grace Delgado reported that “When Jesus and Gertrudes Montejo leased plots around Fort Lowell to Lee Gin Kuan’s Wing Fat Company in 1898, the Chinese had already established a foothold in farming throughout the Tucson basin. Kuan’s neighbors, Sung Sing to the south and the Wah Hop Company gardens to the north, were already masters of the arduous routine of truck farming. . .”
Charles Perkins, a Chinese Inspector, made the Fort Lowell gardens a regular stop on his search for undocumented Chinese:
One of our regular calls was by horse and buggy to the Chinese vegetable gardens beyond the ruins of old Fort Lowell. The men who worked in the gardens, cultivating and irrigating vegetables for local sale and use in the restaurants serving Chinese food, wore dark-blue or black loose cotton jackets and pajama-type unpressed trousers, sandals, and large straw hats.
An article appeared in the Phoenix Weekly Republican (March 8, 1900) about Chinese Inspectors visiting the 20 to 30 gardeners of Fort Lowell in search of Lim Cheung, who was suspected of not having his required papers. He was arrested and held for a deportation hearing.
In about 1900 Wong Wing Seen came to Tucson where he began vegetable farming in what is now Tucson Country Club Estates. This land was once part of Charles H. Bayless’s 1,300-acre ranch, logically named the Bayless Ranch. One of Wong’s Tucson customers was Albert Steinfeld’s Gourmet Market on Stone Avenue. In 1910 Wong moved to Nogales, but by 1944 he and his family had returned to Tucson where many of his descendants still live. The gardens were located east of the fort across the Pantano Wash on the Tanque Verde Creek. On the 1893 Roskruge map, the Montejo property was at the confluence of the Pantano and Tanque Verde washes which merge to form the Rillito Creek. In 1915 the location of the gardens was referred to as the Bayless Ranch. Tucson Country Club Estates, the site referred to as the location where Wong Wing Seen had his garden, was at one time part of the Bayless ranch and near the Montejo property on Tanque Verde Creek.
Anglo farmers, possibly Mormons, started coming into the area in about 1900, in addition to the Mexican and Chinese already farming in the area around Fort Lowell/La Fuerte. Mr. Froemel had a “pickling establishment” at the old fort. Mr. Lynnhurst, located near the fort, was the “largest shipper of eggs to the local market.” Finally, Mr. McMillen was reported to be sowing a crop of watermelon and cantaloupe near the fort.
In 1915 a “deformed” Mexican man known locally as “No Nose” or “No Face” with a “hard reputation” was shot and killed when caught red-handed stealing potatoes from the gardens. A coroner’s jury was impaneled to see if the four Chinese gardeners involved in the shooting should be charged. I assume no charges were filed as there were no follow up articles on the case.
Exactly when the gardeners went out of business I don’t know. The Bayless Ranch sold the part of the land the gardens may have been on in 1935. The land was resold in 1946 and shortly afterwards Tucson Country Club Estates was developed.
Resources
“Chinese Shoot ‘No-Nose’ Who was Stealing Potatoes,” Tucson Daily Citizen, July 9, 1915.
Delgado, Grace Pena. “Of Kith and Kin: Land, Leases and Guanxi in Tucson’s Chinese and Mexican Communities,” Journal of Arizona History, vol. 46, no. 1 (Spring 2005).
“Farming in the Valley of the Santa Cruz,” Arizona Daily Star, July 30, 1908.
“Grocer-restaurateur Wing Sing Wong Dies at Age 104,” Arizona Daily Star, June 11, 1985.
Perkins, Clifford A. “Reminiscences of a Chinese Inspector,” Journal of Arizona History, vol. 17 no. 2 (Summer 1976).
Roskruge, George J. Official Map of Pima County, “Adopted as the official map of Pima County by resolution of Board of Supervisors, July 22, 1893,” viewed on October 12, 2020 https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4333p.la000006/
Tang, Esther. “Tucson’s Chinese Pioneers: A Tradition of Giving to the Community,” Arizona Daily Star, August 12, 1995.
Thiel, Homer. Historic Era at Fort Lowell, Desert Archaeology Inc., posted August 26, 2021, viewed August 1, 2022 https://desert.com/historic-ft-lowell/
Weaver, John. M. The History of Fort Lowell, Master’s Thesis, University of Arizona, 1947, viewed on November 15, 2020 https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/553733