HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
On November 6, 1885, a white mob burned the Yuen Kee Chinese laundry here and expelled Pasadena's entire Chinese population within 24 hours.
33 W Green St (Mills Place Alley), Pasadena, CA 91105
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Publicly accessible alley; historical plaques are free to view
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved urban alley; flat and accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Anti-Chinese Racial Violence 1885 · Chinese Expulsion Pasadena · California Exclusion Era History · City Historical Plaque 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.
Sources
Mills Place Alley does not appear in standard paranormal investigation records — there are no documented EVP sessions or EMF readings at this specific location. The dark tourism designation is driven by the documented historical event rather than by reported apparitions or sensory phenomena.
Pasadena's haunted historic walking tours include the alley under the name the 'Chinatown Fire' stop. Tour guides note the combination of factors that make the site significant in dark-history terms: a violent mob attack, the total erasure of a community, a lynching effigy the following morning, and more than a century of civic silence before the plaques were installed. The site sits in a downtown alley that is still heavily trafficked by day and quiet at night — the contrast between the mundane present use and the documented past violence is part of what makes it a tour stop.
Visitors who spend time at the plaques after dark report an atmosphere of heaviness that several have described in tour reviews. Whether that is the specific knowledge of what happened or something inherent to the place is not answerable from available evidence.
Mills Place Alley is publicly accessible year-round. Historical plaques dedicated by the City of Pasadena mark the location of the Yuen Kee laundry fire and the expulsion of Pasadena's Chinese residents in November 1885. The site is a stop on Pasadena haunted and historic walking tours under the name the 'Chinatown Fire.'
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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