Mills Place Alley (1885 Yuen Kee Laundry Massacre Site)

Pasadena in 1885 had a small but established Chinese community concentrated in the blocks near West Green Street. Many of the Chinese residents worked in laundries and domestic service, subject to the economic restrictions that California's anti-Chinese legislation imposed throughout the period. The national Chinese Exclusion Act had passed in 1882, and anti-Chinese violence was moving through California's towns in a documented pattern: Rock Springs, Wyoming had seen a massacre in September 1885 that killed at least 28 Chinese miners; Tacoma and Seattle were preparing similar expulsions that fall.

On November 6, 1885, a mob of approximately 100 white residents gathered at or near Mills Place Alley and attacked the Yuen Kee laundry operated by Chinese workers on the premises. The building was burned. The violence was not confined to the laundry; it functioned as an expulsion notice to the entire Chinese population. Within 24 hours, Pasadena's Chinese residents — estimates in contemporary accounts range from 60 to 100 people — had been driven from the city. The following morning, a lynching effigy was erected at or near the site as a warning against return.

No prosecution followed. The expulsion was effective and essentially permanent through the exclusion era. Pasadena did not formally acknowledge the event for more than a century.

In 2021, the City of Pasadena rededicated historical plaques at Mills Place Alley that specifically name the Yuen Kee laundry fire and characterize the November 1885 events as a mob attack and expulsion of Chinese residents. The plaques are installed at the site. The alley has since been identified on Pasadena's haunted and historic walking tour routes as the 'Chinatown Fire' stop, connecting the site to the broader dark history tourism circuit that runs through the downtown area.