The site was rediscovered during a 1980s redevelopment project, shedding light on an era when San Jose led the state of California in anti-Chinese violence.

[4][5] By January 1870, white residents had begun complaining to the San Jose City Council about the concentration of Chinese people in the neighborhood.

[6] In March 1870, a wealthy Chinese businessman from San Francisco secured a ten-year lease of the original Market Street Chinatown's land and merchants began to rebuild.

[10] Initially, white residents tolerated the Chinatown to some extent because it was located in the older, less desirable Spanish part of town.

However, as the main business district expanded southward along First Street, boosters increasingly viewed Chinatown's proximity to it and Market Plaza as an obstacle to growth.

His Workingmen's Party championed a provision in the 1879 state constitution that briefly allowed the legislature to make the employment of Chinese people a misdemeanor offense.

[11] In January 1886, the city voted to close all Chinese-owned laundries and began arresting laundrymen for operating in wooden buildings, prompting the washhouses to stop work in protest.

[18] In 1981, the Redevelopment Agency of San Jose contracted Theodoratus Cultural Research to conduct archaeological testing as part of the urban renewal project that included the Circle of Palms Plaza, Fairmont Hotel, and Silicon Valley Financial Center.

In response to outcry from the Chinese community at the site's destruction, the Redevelopment Agency contracted Archaeological Resource Services to perform salvage excavation alongside construction crews from 1985 to 1988.