The Chinese Bunkhouse Project

Our First Single Step
Please help us achieve our goal to preserve this rare remaining building of the "China Camp" from the former Shinn ranch. The building needs to be stabilized and preserved.  For our "First Step", we have two goals: preservation and outreach.

#1 Preservation
Our first goal is to have the building inspected. This first step will help us figure out how to preserve this structure and how much it will cost to do this with the highest preservation standards possible.  We wish for the building to be used for tours and education.

#2 Outreach
We want to show you why this modest ranch building deserves to be preserved. Our team has been working on a history of the Chinese immigrants who worked for the Shinn family, nearby ranches and nurseries, and worked their own farms. In 2019, we will create an exhibit about the early Chinese immigrants who lived along Alameda Creek and nearby areas. We will have events at Shinn Park to show how this humble building can bring people together, just as in the days that it served as the focal point life on the creek. We would like to create school tours and lesson plans that highlight this little known history. We would like to collaborate with colleges and universities to help with research and public outreach.

Why this building matters
Only 0.1% of listed properties in the National Register of Historic Places are Asian/Pacific Islander related. That’s only 94 of 85,000!
A building makes the history real and preserves a history of our diversity!

More about the Chinese Bunkhouse
The one-hundred-year-old Chinese Bunkhouse sits between a barn and a packing shed at the back of the Shinn Historical Park & Arboretum in Fremont, California . The Bunkhouse was once part of a complex of buildings along Alameda Creek - for sleeping, eating, and washing - for the Chinese workers at the Shinn ranch. Only the Bunkhouse and an outhouse remain now as evidence of the Chinese presence since the 1870's. 

Our Shared Histories
Our shared histories of the early days of our towns in Southern Alameda County are well told by the remaining buildings of the Shinn family - the original small home of the Shinn family, the "Big House", and the Chinese Bunkhouse.

The history of the Shinn family includes the history of the people who worked with the Shinns - harvesting fruit, managing orchards, and cooking. The archives are ripe for mining with information about the people who worked for the Shinn family. And we are very lucky to have some oral histories from Chinese immigrant families who lived nearby and worked at the Shinn ranch. From these small histories, we are painting a picture of life here in the Shinn "China Camp".

More Information
Please read more about our project at our website, The Chinese Bunkhouse Preservation Project . You can like us on Facebook , too! We are aligned with the Mission Peak Heritage Foundation  which manages the Shinn House and archives of the Shinn family.

Do you want your donation to farther?
If you wish to make a donation by check and avoid fees, you can send a check to the
Mission Peak Heritage Foundation
P.O. Box 3078,
Fremont, CA 94539.
Please note on check that this is for "The Chinese Bunkhouse Preservation Project".

Note:
Mission Peak Heritage Foundation is a 501C3 non-profit organization, eligible to receive IRS tax-deductible charitable contributions. The EIN is 94-2846937. Eligibility for state tax-deductible charitable contributions should be checked at filing. 

Meet (Some of) the "Bunkmates"
The "Bunkmates" are descendants of early Chinese pioneering families, historians, Rotarians, and a CSUEB student who is a recent immigrant from China.