Description of Historic Place

The Chinese Gardens occupy the southeastern section of Rossland, British Columbia located at the south end of St. Paul Street, extending into the present-day golf course, and are bounded by Trail Creek to the West and the Wagon Road to the Southeast. The Gardens were constructed by the province's earliest Chinese settlers to Rossland, who arrived to work on the Dewdney Trail, or later the railroads. The men cleared and cultivated the rugged, steep land using traditional gardening and terrace-building knowledge. The Gardens occupied a historic area of approximately 70 acres located in blocks 46, 47, 52, 53 and 57.

Heritage Value

The Chinese Gardens have historic, economic, cultural and social value for being the last surviving Chinese Market Gardens that have not been destroyed by urban development and offers rare remaining evidence of Chinese Canadian market gardening in the province. Additionally, the Gardens illustrate the living and working relationship between Chinese Canadians, miners and other early settlers to the Rossland region.

The Gardens are valued as a physical reminder of the extensive and renowned Chinese Canadian market gardening industry that existed in B.C. from the 1880s to the late 1950s. These markets fulfilled a necessary and integral function to the towns in which they were located, providing fresh fruits and vegetables to quickly expanding communities. Many of B.C.'s Chinese Gardens have been both physically and culturally removed from records, leaving the Rossland Chinese Gardens of significant heritage value.

The Gardens covered approximately 70 acres of land and supplied fresh fruit and vegetables to the people of Rossland and Trail by Chinese farmers who peddled their produce, door to door, from large baskets hanging from a yoke worn across their shoulders. The Chinese Gardens were comprised of twelve small farms and were worked by hand and independently. Each farmer had his own shack, garden plot and irrigation trenches which provided water from Trail Creek. Some land was owned by the Chinese farmers and some was leased.

The Chinese gardeners, who owned and worked the gardens, provided significant contributions to the communities of Rossland and Trail through the growth and distribution of fresh produce during the initial development of the cities, up until the 1950s. The Gardens supplied much of the produce before the large-scale importation of vegetables from other sources. A legacy of the time when Chinese Canadians were excluded from a number of other jobs and professions, Chinese market garden farms constituted an important part of the Chinese Canadian community's employment and contributed substantially to the economy.

This historic place provides culturally and socially meaningful context for understanding and appreciating the contribution of the Chinese gardeners to the development of the West Kootenay's, in general, and specifically to Rossland and Trail. Equally important, the Gardens represent an ethnic connection for the many Chinese Canadians who are descendants of the Chinese Market Garden community and Chinese Canadian farmers who emigrated to B.C. from Guangdong province. These men faced legalized discrimination and were prohibited from working in the main industries of the town, notably the mining industry which had brought most other men and immigrants to Rossland. The Gardens offer an educational opportunity for teaching and learning about the history of Chinese Canadians in B.C., and their living and working conditions in a time when Chinese settlers faced legislative and social discrimination.

A collection of community narratives, archival research and landscape evaluations have been conducted over the years and represents the historical living and working relationships of the Chinese gardeners from Rossland's creation and settlement into the 1950s.

Presently, this area is identified mostly by open grassland around Trail Creek, as it flows down the Trail Creek Valley to the Columbia River. Fruit trees, rock walls, rock piles, trenches and depressions still exist today. These remains and artifacts associated with Chinese Gardens are important physical reminders of the Gardens and the people who lived and worked there.

Character-Defining Elements

The elements that define the heritage character of the Chinese Gardens include its:

- Wholeness and completeness of the landscape, including the physical features of the natural landscape and evidence of people in, on and about the natural landscape; and
- Structural remains and outlines of several log-framed buildings, evidence of sod-covered roofs, collapsed rock-lined subterranean root cellars, irrigation trenches, earthen dams, boulder piles, roads, walls, and boulder fence lines.