Feature: Two monuments, one lesson -- How a Wyoming town faces its past

"Racism is simply wrong. It's evil. And when acted upon, it always has tragic results -- always, without fail," said Dick Blust, curator of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum in Green River.

by Xinhua writers Yang Shilong, Shi Chun

ROCK SPRINGS, United States, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 140 years after one of Wyoming's darkest days, a new memorial stands on the site of Rock Springs' long-buried Chinatown.

A bronze miner faces the street and the Rock Springs Massacre Memorial Rock across it -- engraved with 28 names and the Chinese word "peace."

Two monuments. One story. A lesson still unfolding.

"RACISM IS SIMPLY WRONG"

"The Rock Springs Massacre is one of the most, if not the most, shameful episodes of Sweetwater County history," said Dick Blust, curator of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum in Green River.

"Twenty-eight Chinese miners were killed, and some 74 of their homes were utterly destroyed. It was all about bigotry -- bigotry and racism in the West and in the country," he said.

The attack began at Mine No. 6 after a dispute between white and Chinese miners over wages and coal seams. "It started out with a question of money," Blust explained, "but when you mix race prejudice and alcohol, things escalate."

No one was prosecuted. "Any testimony from the Chinese miners who survived wasn't going to be taken seriously," he said. "And none of the white participants were going to testify against each other."

For more than a century, the story was mentioned only in passing, if at all. "It's a terrible injustice to whitewash the more terrible aspects of our past," Blust said. "We believe all history should be made available to everyone."

His takeaway is blunt: "Racism is simply wrong. It's evil. And when acted upon, it always has tragic results -- always, without fail."

For Blust, that message is not frozen in 1885. "History repeats itself when it is untaught," he said in a later reflection. "That's why we teach it -- to stop the next tragedy before it starts."

From his office about a half-hour's drive away in Green River, Blust and his team bring this lesson to classrooms across Sweetwater County, hoping that by exposing injustice, they can also cultivate empathy.

"A TEXTBOOK IN BRONZE"

For sculptor David Alan Clark, who created the new statue unveiled in September 2025, the project was both personal and humbling.

"I grew up near Rock Springs, and it was never mentioned," he said. "It wasn't covered up. I just don't think anyone thought about it."

Clark and his wife, both artists, worked closely with historian Dudley Gardner, who led archaeological digs at the site of the former Chinatown. "It was a go-to-school moment," Clark recalled. "We learned how deep the story ran."

He approached the commission, he said, "as an act of witness, not of authorship." He studied old photos of the Chinese miners -- "faces full of endurance," he said -- and tried to imagine what courage looked like amid such loss.

"You realize quickly that you're not just making a statue," he added, "you're restoring presence to people who were erased."

The finished work depicts a Chinese miner returning to recover what he can and start again.

Around his feet are sculpted remnants -- "burnt wood, broken pottery, a shovel, an axe, a shoe, a shattered lamp," Clark said. "They were modeled from actual artifacts the museum gave us."

He calls the piece "a textbook in bronze -- something that can teach for decades and decades to come."

The miner's face, he said, holds "a little grief and a little determination -- a certain amount of stoic acceptance and a certain amount of resolve for the future."

"It's not about you; it's about them -- their loss," he added. "You try to be a little reverent and a little humble while you're working."

Clark also credited Ricky Leo, a descendant of one of the victims, whose family photos helped him model the miner's expression. "Expressions are fleeting," Clark said. "You can work a long time on a face, but at some point you stop and say: this is all I can say, and I'm saying it best."

RESILIENCE, NOT REVENGE

While sculpting, Clark found himself reflecting on what happened after the massacre.

Surviving Chinese miners -- believing they would be sent home -- were packed into railcars bound for Evanston, Wyoming. But the Union Pacific Railroad soon reversed course: it needed them back to keep the mines running.

"They ended up right back here," Clark said, "where they had to pick up and bury their dead, repurchase their tools, and rebuild their town -- working side by side with some of the very people who had started all this."

He paused before adding quietly, "It's a very difficult story, but it really talks about resilience and determination -- and a certain amount of acceptance, because they elected not to get revenge."

To him, that choice matters as much as the tragedy itself. "This is a remembrance of a great crime," he said, "and a silent call for racial harmony -- not racial violence."

The sculptor hoped the figure would carry that message -- not through gesture or speech, but through presence. "You're creating something that will stand for decades and decades to come," Clark said. "If a work of art can make people stop, think, and learn -- even a little -- maybe it helps make the world a little better."

"Art has a way of keeping memory alive," Clark said. "It's not about making something pretty -- it's about making something true."

At sunset, the bronze miner's expression seems to change with the light -- grief softening into quiet resolve as he faces the stone across the street. Behind him lie the buried remains of Rock Springs' Chinatown, and beyond them the echo of the lesson both memorials now carry: Hatred burns quickly, but remembrance endures.

"I hope sculpture teaches young people the world existed before they were born," Clark said, "that they learn the benefits of racial harmony and the great cost of violence in people's lives -- because it echoes through time."

For Blust, that same echo drives his museum's mission. "It needs to be a lesson," he said, "in how not to behave and how not to have relations with other nationalities and races."

The two men -- the historian and the artist -- speak through different media but work toward the same end: turning a site of destruction into a classroom of conscience.■