The camp named for wild horses

Yema-po means “wild-horse slope,” and it’s the name archaeologists gave a work camp below Lake Chabot’s dam in San Leandro.

The East Bay Regional Park District’s marker says that in 1979 a renovation of the dam “unearthed a century-old Chinese encampment buried in the creek embankment below.” It was home to the 800 Chinese people who, the marker says, worked on the dam from 1874 to 1892. Cal State East Bay students dug there and recovered “over 60,000 artifacts.” The excavators chose the name, the marker says, to acknowledge “the role of the Chinese laborers in running horses across the dam to compact the soil.” And of the 20,000 animal bones found at the camp, 70% were pig.

The rain was part of the job from the start. In the fall of 1874, the district’s panel notes, “the rains washed out 21,000 cubic yards of the earthen dam wall downstream,” and the dam was rebuilt. A panel the Alameda County Historical Society dedicated at the park remembers “the countless unnamed and unsung Chinese laborers who worked on Lake Chabot Dam.” The Yema-po marker stands on the one-mile Lake Chabot Historical Walk.

It took horses, hundreds of hands and a second try to make that dam hold back the rain. A house has the easier job: the roof sheds the water, and the gutters and downspouts carry it away, as long as the leaves aren’t in the way. Btw, if you’d rather not do the running around on your own roof, we’ll gladly take it on (no horses needed… 😉 Sunshine Gutters and Roofing – Let us shine on your rainy day.