How a Mob Got Away with Murder in Truckee’s Chinatown
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe Kuner
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the late 1800s, Truckee, California, had one of the largest Chinatowns in America. Built by the Chinese laborers who helped construct the Central Pacific Railroad, it was a thriving community—until the white landowners and business owners decided they wanted it gone. What followed was a campaign of terror, arson, and outright murder, culminating in the Trout Creek Outrage—a brutal attack on Chinese workers as they slept, carried out by a group of white men who believed they had the right to erase an entire population.
Despite confessions, testimony, and political pressure to hold the attackers accountable, what unfolded in the courtroom was just as predictable as the violence itself. A system designed to protect only certain people did exactly that.
This episode unpacks how an entire town conspired to erase its Chinese residents, the violent night that sealed their fate, and how Truckee’s racist tactics were so successful they became a blueprint for others to follow.
#TroutCreekOutrage #TrueCrimePodcast #ChineseAmericanHistory #RailroadHistory #TruckeeCalifornia #RacialViolence #HistoryUncovered #ForgottenCrimes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the late 1800s, Truckee, California had a problem. |
| 0:03.9 | And by problem, I mean, a thriving Chinatown that white residents decided they didn't want around anymore. |
| 0:10.8 | Instead of coexisting like reasonable adults, they chose arson, harassment, and straight-up murder to get their point across. |
| 0:18.2 | What started as a land grab turned into something much darker, |
| 0:21.8 | a coordinated attack on Chinese workers as they slept, a courtroom charade that let killers walk |
| 0:27.5 | free, and a boycott so effective that Truckee literally celebrated when the last Chinese resident |
| 0:33.8 | left town. Today we're talking about the Trout Creek outrage, a story about greed, |
| 0:39.8 | violence, and how an entire town worked together to erase its own history. But before we dive in, |
| 0:46.4 | if you like your true crime brief and bingeable, you're in the right place. Hit follow now for at least |
| 0:52.2 | two episodes every week. This is 10-minute murder. Let's get into it. By 1868, railroad construction had climbed its way into the unforgiving terrain of Donner Pass, California. |
| 1:30.1 | Laying those steel tracks through the mountains was no small feat. It required explosives, |
| 1:35.2 | back-breaking labor, and a workforce willing to take on a job that was as dangerous as it was essential. |
| 1:42.1 | Enter the Chinese laborers. |
| 1:46.0 | Thousands of them arrived, |
| 1:49.6 | carving through the landscape to make way for the Central Pacific Railroad. |
| 1:52.2 | Without them, the tracks wouldn't have been built, |
| 1:53.7 | and without those tracks, |
| 1:57.1 | Truckee wouldn't have transformed into the booming town it became. |
| 1:59.3 | But once the railroad was complete, |
| 2:00.6 | the question remained, what happened to the workers |
| 2:02.6 | who made it all possible? Many of the Chinese laborers chose to stay. They had spent years |
| 2:08.0 | shaping the land, and now they sought stability, maintaining the railroads they helped build, |
... |
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