Download our 2025 Annual Report to see the impact we made together.
2025 was a year of growth, connection, and impact for the 1882 Foundation—from 37 events reaching more than 1,770 attendees to expanded education programs, heritage tours, volunteer engagement, and community partnerships.
Dear Friends,
The long-anticipated unveiling of the National Historic Landmark Plaque for Summit Tunnel Camp will now be held on Saturday, August 9, 2025, during our office launch event at The Celine in Sacramento!
Please note this change in date and location. Due to unexpected circumstances, the unveiling of the National Historic Landmark plaque WILL NOT be held at the Truckee Ranger District Station in Truckee, CA on August 10, 2025. All formal events and programming will be in Sacramento on August 9, 2025 to better accommodate our guests.
There will still be a mini tour to the Summit Tunnel on Sunday, August 10, 2025, departing promptly at 9AM from the Vagabond Inn parking lot in Sacramento. The tour is limited to the first 30 attendees, with check-in beginning at 8:45 AM. To reserve your seat, please RSVP here. Seats will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis between 8:45 AM-9:00 AM. The charter bus is expected to return to Sacramento around 3:00 PM the same day.
We would be honored if you can join us on August 9th! All members of the community are encouraged to join. Thank you for your continued support and participation. Please review the information on the following page, and feel free to contact us at info@1882foundation.org wit
Sincerely,
Ted Gong, Executive Director
DAY ONE
Saturday, August 9, 2025
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM PST
The Celine, 428 J St
Sacramento, CA 95814
Day One features exhibitions, speeches, and a three-part lecture series led by subject matter experts. The first lecture highlights the history of the Chinese workers and their essential role in the construction of the Summit Tunnel. The second lecture discusses the development and emergence of Sacramento’s Chinatown. The third lecture returns to present day and focuses on Sacramento’s strategic urban redevelopment plans and Chinatown’s place in the revitalization.
We will be unveiling the National Historic Landmark Plaque for Summit Tunnel Camp during this event! This plaque is issued by the U.S. Department of Interior. We also plan to display another plaque issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
All events will take place in The Celine, a historic venue previously known as the Travelers Hotel.
We have invited elected officials, community leaders, and key stakeholders. Events are open to the media. We encourage all members of the community to join. Light refreshments will be served.
DAY TWO
Sunday, August 10, 2025
8:45 AM – 3:00 PM PST
Meet in Sacramento at the Vagabond Inn Parking Lot (909 3rd St, Sacramento, CA 95814)
Day Two features a guided walking tour of the Summit Tunnel Camp and China Wall by knowledgeable and experienced individuals. As required by the U.S. Forest Service, participation waiver forms must be signed; hard copies need to be collected prior to the tour.
We recommend wearing comfortable clothes and hiking shoes that are appropriate for walking on rocky and uneven surfaces. Please bring your own snacks and/or lunches if you have dietary needs. Limited bottles of water will be provided.
Since our founding, the 1882 Foundation has been guided by an unwavering commitment to highlighting our shared American stories and facilitating connection. Our work is focused on promoting cross-community dialogue, designing educational programs, and strengthening relationships at the local and national levels. It has been incredibly gratifying to work on national initiatives and with organizations across the country to build a future where Chinese American experiences are fully celebrated and woven into the fabric of American identity.
That is why on this Independence Day we are especially excited to announce the designation of the Summit Tunnel Camp as a National Historic Landmark. Our work in this designation effort began nearly 10 years ago. We never stopped moving this effort forward because we believed – as do many of you – in the importance of shedding light on the journey of the Chinese workers who contributed to this important piece of American history. We are also especially proud of Legacy, a documentary produced by the U.S. Forest Service and released in 2020 that discusses the rich and layered history of the Summit Tunnel.
To support our work across the country, the 1882 Foundation has opened its west coast office in Sacramento, CA as of July 1, 2025. This office will work closely with our headquarters in Washington, DC to build partnerships and strengthen heritage tours throughout the Central Valley.
We will be celebrating these two milestones by hosting a series of special events on August 9 and 10 in California. August 9, 2025 will be the official launch of our Sacramento office in Chinatown Square, followed by the unveiling of the National Historical Landmark plaque at the Truckee Ranger District Station in Truckee, CA on August 10, 2025. We would be honored if you can join us. All members of the community are encouraged to join. Thank you for your continued support and participation. Please register here and feel free to contact us at info@1882foundation.org.
We wish you a happy Fourth of July!
Sincerely,
Ted Gong
MORE THAN EVER, WE MUST MAKE A LITTLE TROUBLE
This year will be exciting. With our office reconstruction completed except for backyard landscaping and installing a lift for handicap access, the new office enables us to engage more effectively with the Mayor’s Office and downtown stakeholders on issues of neighborhood cleanliness, crime, and revitalization. This has raised the visibility of the “Chinatown off H” and
“If Buildings Could Talk” projects as well as the Chinatown Park Plaza and the half street closure in front of our office. The renovated office itself illustrates what a reimagined Chinatown can become.
Even more exciting, we will be opening an office in Sacramento and celebrating the designation of the Sierra Summit Camp, a National Historic Landmark. The attachment describes accomplishments and plans. You and friends have made it possible.
My call to you is to continue making a little trouble. More than ever, private donations and moral support for humanities and historical preservation are needed. We must demonstrate to demand that our stories be preserved and told honestly, boldly and completely.
The years 2023 and 2024 have been transformative. The Foundation emerged from the pandemic a stronger organization, with innovative methods, and renewed alliances. The Mellon Foundation supported an entire rebuilding and doubling of our office space, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities will add an ADA-lift and safety measures in 2025 for landscaped backyard and alley pathways. This rear access and expanded reception and activity space anticipate an “activated alley” to match the City’s continuous revitalization efforts in response to the sports arena’s reforms. The half closing of I Street at Chinatown Park, a Chinatown mural, neighborhood clean-up activities and anti-crime programs along with our “Chinatown Off H Street” initiative and convening of informal meetings among property owners and developers… they all relate to joint preservation proposals and building neighbor trust.
The two years saw us produce four “activations” with the Kennedy Center’s Social Impact Cultural Caucus at the REACH and two Lunar New Year events at their Millennium Stage. With the Georgetown Law School, American Society of Landscape Architects, and the National Building Museum, we organized three in-person seminars with virtual components on Urban Chinatowns. With the National Portrait Gallery and the Charles Sumner School we hosted a bi-annual national conference on Chinese American Women in History. We commemorated the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Supreme Court decision on Wong Kim Ark on birthright citizenship with a public reception-lecture at the Congressional Library. In mid-2024, we organized a national conference in Salt Lake City on Rural Chinatowns with the Utah State Historical Preservation Office supported by National Trust for Historic Preservation. We contributed to “Sightlines” by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center and have included this visual exhibit as an integral part of our expanded Chinatown walking tours. And, in California, we carried out our annual Heritage Tour to the Summit Tunnel with the U.S. Forest Service.
The range and scope of these activities were possible because our core organizing principle is to build collaborations and harness diverse capabilities and expertise.
The new year will be more of the same and better.
A second national Rural Chinatown Conference is being planned for Memphis in October 2025. Our DC Chinatown tours are receiving attention by educational and community organizations, including from other countries. We have expanded our paid and summer intern programs through new associations with University of California Washington Center and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. The National Parks Conservation Association is linked to this program as well, which we believe contributes strategically to building career and scholarship pipelines for younger storytellers and historical preservationists. We are preparing for the opening of a long-term APIA exhibit “Generations: Stories of Asian Americans in Richmond” with Valentine Museum and laying ground for a regional conference on teaching APIA topics in middle schools. We want to organize at least one colloquium this year on the Supreme Court and historical APIA cases (such as related to birthright citizenship and access to public education) and prepare for a fourth bi-annual Chinese American Women in History Conference for early 2026.
More exciting for the coming year, the Mellon Foundation awarded us a 3-year grant to strengthen Heritage Tours and evaluate feasibility of an Interpretive Center.
The grant allows us to open an operational office in Sacramento to strengthen programs focused on the Sierra Summit and the transcontinental railroad. We want to launch this office by July 2025. The grant also allows us to expand our historical preservation efforts to places throughout the California Central Valley. Consistent with Mellon’s and our own long-term perspectives on humanities and places, the grant helps us search for a suitable Archiving Facility in Sacramento or Fresno for railroad, mining, and agricultural artifacts.
Most exciting, the Sierra Summit Tunnel Camp became a National Historic Landmark on December 16, 2024.
Culminating a 10-year effort, this national milestone marks continuing efforts to stablish public-private partnerships for building an interpretive program or center in Sacramento and at the summit site. Our goal as always is to strengthen public understanding of our shared American story.
GET READY….
…TO CELEBRATE AND BUILD TOGETHER
Become part of the excitement.
Join our mail list at 1882foundation.org, and donate any amount to PayPal, or mail to: The 1882 Foundation, PO Box 2492, Fairfax, VA 22031.
The 1882 Foundation is a 501(3)1 IRS-approved organization, EIN 46-1144885.
I do want to say few closing remarks. It is easy for us to pronounce that the Repeal of the
Chinese Exclusion Act is for the purpose of righting a wrong, to get justice for the harm and
violence that befell the Chinese people. To prevent history repeating –the lynchings, the killings,
the driving out… the loss of opportunities…suspicions of disloyalty, that we are perpetual foreigner, or
just invisible and inconsequential. Of course, all of this must be addressed. It is unfortunate that after
80 years of the Exclusion Act’s repeal, we are still facing anti-Asian hate and FBI “whole-of-society”
approaches to investigations.
Let’s look at the Exclusion Laws and Repeal in another context. This is germane to the fact this year is
also the 125th anniversary of the Wong Kim Ark decision that affirmed Birthright Citizenship.
These laws –of exclusion—affect everyone. They are about who can become Americans. We may have
tried historically to fix that definition on race, several times, but that has not held up. Lately, we have
begun to question birthright citizenship by saying the parents of children born in the U.S. must have
certain immigration status and pedigree. This undermines a fundamental principle that makes America
exceptional. It does not matter under America’s Birthright Citizenship whether your father was King
George or Poor Rihard, or what was your parents’ previous condition servitude. When you are born in
this country, you are equal to everyone else, and they are equal to you.
So, I can ask you, who are you –“We are Americans.” And, that is enough of an answer. Can I ask you to
say loudly and proudly, “We Are Americans.” We are not invisible. Stand up and toast one another “WE
are Americans.”
View the December 17, 2023 Statement from President Joe Biden on the 80th Anniversary of the Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act.