If you're excavating the remains of a 120-year-old Chinese laundry in a Rocky Mountain mining town, you'd expect to unearth fish bones, buttons and clothespins.

Kids' toys would be a surprise. Children were not common in rough-and-tumble mining camps.

Evidence of Chinese politics would also be interesting. The immigrants played a role in their country's chaotic transformation.

Crews digging for the past two years in Marysville have made such finds. Historical archeologist Dan Hall of Missoula said the artifacts are "incredible" and "eye-popping."

A Chinese dig in Montana is a rarity in itself. The Marysville site is significant because it's the first Chinese site excavated in Montana for decades, he said.

The work precedes construction of a new route for Marysville Road. The road will get a big, sweeping turn as it passes the old gold mining boomtown and heads up the hill toward the Great Divide Ski Area.

Dig details

The Chinese laundries probably date from the 1880s, Hall said. The archaeologists found it as they were surveying the area to be covered by the rerouted road.

On a recent, balmy fall day, crew members sifted and carefully scraped away soil centimeter by centimeter. Exposed timbers marked the foundations of what old insurance maps show as side-by-side laundry businesses. Magnetic imaging also picked up the building's outline.

You don't see the board sidewalk, which fronted the main drag into town. The next door livery stable is invisible, as is the doctor's office down the road. The ruins of the Peterson Hotel remain to the east.

Hall has done a lot of investigations in the West, including Traveler's Rest on Lolo Pass, Fort Missoula and Garnet ghost town. Mining towns are his favorite.

Forgotten Chinese

The Chinese immigrant experience in Montana is almost a historical footnote.

Much of what is known about the culture was compiled by Carroll College professor Robert Swartout, who wrote a 1988 article titled "From Kwantung to Big Sky."

They came to mine what they called the "The Shining Mountains" and once made up at least 10 percent of Montana's population. They helped construct the railroads, including the Mullan Tunnel west of Helena and over the Continental Divide. Others started laundries or gardens.

Prejudicial laws passed in the early 1900s spurred an exodus back across the Pacific Ocean or to safe havens on the West Coast.

Kids at camp

A Chinese site is distinctive because the artifacts are so unique compared to what you'd find from an ethnic European or African-American site, archaeologists said.

Hall estimates Marysville once had between 120 and 500 Chinese.

Unlike the best-known Chinatowns in Butte and Helena, they weren't segregated in Marysville, said Montana Department of Transportation environmental impact specialist Jon Axline.

Hall said he believes that children -- and, by extension, women -- lived at the laundries and the mining camp.

Dolls, toy shovels and kids' shoes are evidence of kids, Hall said. Chinese children didn't show up on the local school rolls, as they weren't allowed to attend.

But Marysville was an atypical mining town, Axline said. The British-owned Montana Mining Company encouraged families, he said.

In general, Chinese populations were typically underestimated by Montana census-takers, scholars say. Women and kids were likely not counted, and incorrect assumptions were made.

For example, the 1880 census found only one Chinese "wife" in Helena, but 29 prostitutes, even though most were listed as living with a man. Chinese men outnumbered women tenfold or more, according to census records.

Chinese politics

China exported miners since emigrants went to Mexico and Peru in the late 1500s. By the late 1800s, many left the mainland not only to advance their station in life, but to escape political unrest.

As the Ch'ing dynasty fell apart, periodic rebellions and food shortages created an exodus.

Nearly all who landed in the Northern Rockies hailed from Guangdong province outside the Canton delta.

But they kept much of their culture with them.

The immigrants created social organizations based on clan lines. They also brought food, games, spiritual traditions and vices. Hall and his crew found medicine bottles and playing pieces from Renju, a form of tic-tac-toe.

They also might have played politics from afar.

At the Marysville dig, a 2½ inch-by-5 inch letter press could be evidence that the immigrants had an interest in their country's future. Dignitaries from the homeland could have raised money in the mining camps to exert political pressure on a chaotic situation back in China, Hall said.

A photo of Marysville's Committee of the Chinese Empire Reform Association found at the Montana Historical Society archives would appear to bolster that claim.

The image of a skullcap-wearing dignitary in a rickshaw could promote someone seeking to raise money -- and to raise hell back in the homeland, Hall said of the artifact.

Typical fare

Fish bones indicate a Chinese diet, the Marysville archaeologists said.

So are pottery remnants, which probably held jars packed with cuttlefish, squid, duck eggs or other Chinese delicacies. The tops were sealed with wax and imported from the West Coast to the mining camps.

The Chinese also adapted to local fare, Hall says. Beef and venison bones were common, which were a staple for white miners.

The Chinese were also known for their gardens, finding a way to make them flower in the short, dry growing season. Vegetables from these gardens, a pound of meat per day and herbal medicines kept the Chinese healthier than their white counterparts, according to Eastern Washington University history professor Liping Zhu.

They had lower death rates and avoided scurvy.

What about the cat bones found in Marysville? An aphrodisiac, Hall says.

Artifacts stay in Marysville

For now, the artifacts found in Marysville are being carefully catalogued. They belong to the private landowner and the state, although Hall said they will eventually be displayed at the town museum.

"It's people's trash and garbage -- nothing that's museum quality," Hall said. "It's information potential. We can still piece together their lifestyle, their diet, their socioeconomic structure."

The dig site will be covered up, the artifacts placed in the local museum and an interpretive marker erected. Other sites could be excavated as part of the road reconstruction process.

MDT historian Axline is fascinated by Marysville. He and local historian Ellen Baumler plan to write a book about the town.

"The whole town is an archaeological site," he said, watching the crews work. "This is so far the most important site. This is an important place."

Reporter Jason Mohr can be reached at 447-4075 or helenair.com">jason.mohr@helenair.com.