Gin Chow (1857 – 1933)[1] was a Chinese immigrant who gained fame in California as a prophet and fortune teller able to predict the weather and other natural events.
Born in Guangzhou as the son of teachers, Chow immigrated to California at the age of 16 in 1873 arriving in San Francisco he worked as a dish washer in a French restaurant, went into domestic service for six years for William Welles Hollister and later became a gardener.
By 1890 Chow and family had moved south to the Lompoc Valley where he owned a small farm and grew strawberries and casaba melons which he then sold on the streets of Santa Barbara.
Chow gain regional reputation with accounts of his prediction of the 1925 earthquake which hit the Santa Barbara area retold in articles by Los Angeles Times columnist Harry Carr and in books by Santa Barbara News-Press publisher Thomas More Storke.
Skeptics of Chow point to there being no evidence that his earthquake predictions are anything but claims made after the events took place.
Chow believed that his water rights, as an owner of land through which the Santa Ynez passed, were being violated.