The Return of Constable Buzzkill

1911    Sacramento's opium dens have always seemed a little more like an urban legend than a historical fact to me. It's not that I don't believe opium dens existed, but, like legal brothels, they seem a little too exotic to be real. I don't mean culturally exotic, or anything like that, of course. It's more that they seem to be so far removed from the world we live in that they shouldn't have existed as recently as they did. And if they really did exist so recently, then certainly not in my Sacramento, right?

Ah, Sacramento circa 1911 was not the city it is today. The November 7, 1911 Sacramento Daily Union announced to its readers "Two More Opium Raids by Pharmacy Board." Two more?! Indeed. The pair of raids actually followed the "big raid" of the previous week. Led by Inspector Browne (first name not supplied, unless it was Inspector) and Constable E.A. Merkely, officers shut down dens at 210 1/2  and 314 1/2 I Street. The Union reports that the authorities arrested eight, placing them in custody of the County Jail. The race-conscious Union (especially when identifying alleged criminals) noted that those arrested included four Chinese, one white, and "M.U. Clayton, colored." Jan Hoang, owner of the 314 1/2 den was booked on two charges of possession and one of selling opium. There is no mention of the charges against the others involved. Among the items authorities confiscated were "pipes, bowls, and several cans of opium and yen shee." 

The opium dens mentioned in the Union article were located in the second incarnation of Sacramento's Chinatown. The city's original Chinese enclave was near China Slough (a.k.a. Sutter Slough, Sutter Lake, or China Lake), a small body of polluted water that covered much of the area now home to the Southern Pacific depot and the rail yards. As the slough was filled in for industrial development in the first decade of the 20th century, the city's beloved Chinese population was edged to the west, into an area around Third Street between I and M streets. Sacramento's main Chinese commercial strip, however, remained on I Street between Third and Sixth streets. It's all gone now, of course. Redevelopment in the 1950s and 1960s destroyed many of the city's early 20th century ethnic neighborhoods. Most of Chinatown's residents moved to the Southside Park section of the city.  An Old Sacramento parking garage occupies the 210 1/2 I Street lot, while the 314 1/2 lot is the current site of the Vagabond Inn. Chinatown Mall at J and Fifth streets, the only reminder of the historic Chinatown I am aware of, went up according to the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency's 1969 plans for a commercial and low-income housing project for the displaced ethnic Chinese community.


I did manage to find a 1939 photo that shows the block on which the den at 210 1/2 I Street den stood. It's not clear whether that building existed when the photo was snapped, but the image is of the correct side of the street, is identified as a picture of "Old Chinatown," and shows a bunch of old buildings. The former opium den might be in there somewhere.