Tombstone’s Chinese Population

For many years I have been seeing population estimates for Tombstone’s Chinese community that looked too large.  One commonly cited figure is 500 but I have seen figures of 800 or higher used.  For example, in an article written for the Tombstone Times the estimate is given as “In a town of more than 5000, perhaps 300 to 500 were Chinese . . .” There is no citation given as to where this figure came from.  Another example is from True West that states “During the 1880s, Tombstone had a population of about 500 Chinese.” Again, this figure is uncited.

China Mary’s tombstone in Boothill Cemetery in 1940. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017742137/ .

It wasn’t until I read Eric Clements’s After the Boom . . . that I found cited and reasonable figures for the number of Chinese living in Tombstone. For many reasons, this is an interesting book and I recommend it to anyone interested in Arizona history. Mr. Clements did the work of going through the census and other sources to calculate what he felt were the most accurate figures possible for Tombstone’s population and for its Chinese population over decades.  

Date Total Population Of Tombstone1% of Population Chinese2Calculated Chinese Population
18826,0004%240
18844,0004%160
18893,0004%120
18902,0004%80
18911,8004%72

All statistics from: Clements, Eric L. After the Boom in Tombstone and Jerome, Arizona: Decline in Western Resource Towns, University of Nevada Press, Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History and Humanities, 2003.

  1. Total Population – page 135 (Note: 1880 Census gives the total population of Tombstone as 973 but the author did not want to use this figure because there was no way to tell the town from the district census.)
  2. % Chinese – page 144, after 1900 the percentage of Chinese in Tombstone drops to 3%.
The crumbling buildings of Tombstone in a Dorothea Lange photo taken in 1937. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives https://www.loc.gov/resource/fsa.8b31929/

Resources

Shueh, Sam and Eric Chin. “Chinese Residents in Tombstone Arizona,” Tombstone Times, December 2006, viewed on 9/16/2022 https://tombstonetimes.com/chinese-in-tombstone-arizona/.

Willingham, Emily.  “People Think Minority Groups Are Bigger Than They Really Are,” Scientific American, April 27, 2022, viewed on 9/16/2022 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-think-minority-groups-are-bigger-than-they-really-are/