Preserving the Folsom Juneteenth History, Restoring the Legacy of Negro Bar Chinatown

Folsom Juneteenth Celebration - Dia de Los Negros and Historic Negro Bar Chinatown Tour

FOLSOM, CA — Folsom Juneteenth Weekend – Día de Los Negros will convene at Leidesdorff Plaza, Historic Folsom Station, at 11:30 AM, Friday, June 26, 2026 and last all weekend.

Our Diamond Jubilee Year of Leidesdorff Plaza includes reclaiming Historic Chinatown Negro Bar, largest Chinatown outside of San Francisco in the California Gold Rush Era and was burned down after the US Civil War in 1867.

Historic Period Timeline
1844: Honorable William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr. acquired the 35,521 acre Mexican Land Grant and established a cattle and wheat ranch.

1848: Negro Bar was documented as the earliest mining camp on the American River on the northeast portion of Leidesdorff Ranch.

1850: Negro Bar Hotel and General Store was owned by Sacramento County Board of Supervisor, Chair, James Meridith

1854-1855: Theodore Judah, civil engineer surveyed and recorded the 98 original lots in the City of Folsom overlayed upon the existing townsite of Negro Bar

1854: The Sacramento Valley Railroad confirmed route was from Negro Bar to Sacramento, establishing the region’s early transportation network.

Negro Bar lay within the northeastern portion of Hon. William Alexander Leidesdorff Jr.’s Rancho Rio de Los Americanos, a 35,500‑acre Mexican Land Grant. Leidesdorff, the African Founding Father of California, managed his major wheat and cattle enterprise while maintaining peaceful relations with the Nisenan/Miwok people, as stipulated in his grant title.

In spring 1848, Leidesdorff commissioned official reports confirming “probable” vast sums of gold on his property. Lt. Reading and James Marshall observed miners described as “poachers” working the area. Following Leidesdorff’s untimely death on May 18, 1848, the public announcement of “gold, gold, gold” ignited the world’s first global news story.

Pan‑African Legacy
Archival research continues to reveal “Hidden Figures” of Pan‑African ancestry in international archives, private collections, and California State records documenting early African‑descended pioneers who shaped Alta California during the Mexican‑U.S. transition.

By 1849, migrants from across the Pan‑African Diaspora joined Native American, European, and Mormon workers along the mile‑long gravel bar south of the American River, forming one of California’s earliest multicultural communities.

In 1852, catastrophic floods and the California Fugitive Slave Law displaced many free Black miners from Negro Bar.
They rebuilt thriving communities at Negro Hill, Negro Flat, Mormon Island, Salmon Falls, and Massachusetts Flat with Negro Hill emerging as the new regional hub.

Modern Commemoration
Today, a nationwide coalition led by the California Black Agriculture Working Group calls upon historians, business leaders, and policymakers to preserve the authentic name and legacy of 1854 Negro Bar, Sacramento County for distant future generations.