They escorted the surviving Chinese miners, most of whom had fled to Evanston, Wyoming, back to Rock Springs a week after the riot.

[2] The massacre in Rock Springs touched off a wave of anti-Chinese violence, especially in the Puget Sound area of Washington Territory.

[14] The white miners at Rock Springs, being mostly Cornish, Irish, Swedish, and Welsh immigrants, believed lower-paid Chinese laborers drove down their wages.

[15][16][17][18][19][20] The Chinese at Rock Springs were aware of the animosity and rising racial tension with other miners, but had not taken any precautions, as no prior events indicated there would be any riots.

[21] At 7:00 a.m. on September 2, 1885, ten American men, in ordinary garb and miner's uniforms, arrived at coal pit number six at the Rock Springs mine.

Source:[30] In the days following the riot, surviving Chinese immigrants in Rock Springs fled and were picked up by Union Pacific trains.

On September 3, the Rock Springs Independent published an editorial which confirmed the rumors of "the return", as a few Chinese began to trickle back into town to search for valuables.

[22][page needed] In general, however, Wyoming newspapers disapproved of the acts of the massacre while supporting the cause of the original miners.

[2] Wyoming's territorial Governor Francis E. Warren visited Rock Springs on September 3, 1885, the day after the riot, to make a personal assessment.

After his trip to Rock Springs, Warren traveled to Evanston, where he sent telegrams to U.S. President Grover Cleveland appealing for federal troops.

At Camp Murray, Utah Territory, Colonel Alexander McDowell McCook was ordered to augment the garrison sent to Wyoming with six more companies.

The mining company had buried only a few dead; others remained lying in the open, mangled, decomposing, and partially eaten by dogs, hogs, or other animals.

[3] After the riot in Rock Springs, sixteen men were arrested, including Isaiah Washington, a member-elect to the territorial legislature.

[2] In explaining its decision, the grand jury declared that there was no cause for legal action, stating, in part: "We have diligently inquired into the occurrence at Rock Springs.

... [T]hough we have examined a large number of witnesses, no one has been able to testify to a single criminal act committed by any known White person that day.

[34] The American envoy to China, Charles Harvey Denby, and others in the diplomatic corps reported rising anti-American sentiment in Hong Kong and in Canton, Guangdong, following the riot.

The United States government agreed to pay compensation for the damaged property but not for the actual victims of the massacre, although Bayard was inclined to resist the requests for payments.

[34] In a letter to the minister of China's Washington legation dated February 18, 1886, he expressed a personal view that the violence against Chinese immigrants was precipitated by their resistance to cultural assimilation, and that racism against Chinese was typically found among other immigrants rather than the majority of the populace:Chinese immigrants ... segregate themselves from the rest of the residents and citizens of the United States and ... refuse to mingle with the mass of population ... As a consequence, race prejudice has been more excited against them, notably among aliens of other nationalities ...[35] Denby's predictions caused Bayard to seek a Congressionally appropriated indemnity.

[29] The compensation was made as a monetary gift and not as a legal decree of responsibility for the massacre and the outcome amounted to a minor diplomatic victory for China.

The New York Times blasted the city of Rock Springs in the first of at least two editorials on the topic, stating, "the appropriate fate for a community of this kind would be that of Sodom and Gomorrah".

[16] In December 1885, U.S. President Grover Cleveland presented his State of the Union report to Congress, and in it, his reaction to the Rock Springs massacre.

He stated, "All of the power of this government should be exhorted to maintain the amplest good faith towards China in the treatment of these men, and the inflexible sternness of the law ... must be insisted upon ... race prejudice is the chief factor to originating these disturbances".

[9] Throughout the Puget Sound area, Chinese workers were driven out of communities and subject to violence in Washington cities and towns, including Tacoma, Seattle, Newcastle, and Issaquah.

Chinese workers were driven out of other Washington towns, but sources indicated, as early as 1891, that the above events were specifically connected to the wave of violence touched off at Rock Springs.

[9] Other states reported incidents as well: As far away as Augusta, Georgia, anger was expressed against the Chinese in response to the massacre at Rock Springs.

According to The New York Times, the rioting in Rock Springs fueled the desire of anti-Chinese Georgians in Augusta to air their grievances.

[46] The Rock Springs massacre was seen by observers at the time, and by historians today, as one of the worst and most significant instance of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States.

[49][50] His book, Incident at Bitter Creek: The Rock Springs Massacre, was widely criticized in reviews,[48][49][50][51] though Storti stated he represented the historical record as it stood.

[48][49][50] The use of Chinese workers by the railroad during an 1875 strike created widespread resentment among the White miners, which continued to build until the Rock Springs massacre.

The area that once encompassed Camp Pilot Butte is located on the north bank of Bitter Creek, in the northwest part of the city.