COLOMA -- A Northern California land preservation group has purchased a 272-acre ranch thought to be the first North American site settled by Japanese colonists.
The American River Conservancy said it bought the former Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony in El Dorado County last week for $3.3 million. It hopes to turn it into a public park and museum.
The group says the ranch is known as the only place outside Japan settled by samurai. Established in July 1869, it was used for silk worm farming and for growing rice, tea, stone fruits and bamboo.
The land includes the grave of the first Japanese woman buried on U.S. soil and was the birthplace of the first Japanese immigrant to become a U.S. citizen.
The U.S. Park Service recently designated the ranch as a site of national significance.
http://www.pastforwardinc.com/naqm.htm
 House associated with Wakamatsu colonists | The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony in Gold Hill, California, was occupied from 1869-1871. It is the site of the first Japanese American colony in the United States. The American River Conservancy contracted with Past Forward, Inc. to nominate the site for the National Register of Historic Places in December 2008. The California State Historic Resources Commission approved nomination in April 2009. The Keeper of the National Register listed the site in October 2009.
See www.arconservancy.org for more details on this important property.
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| The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony Farm is one of the oldest properties in North America associated with Japanese permanent settlement in the United States. Members of the colony occupied the site from 1869-1871. The site has a residence and barn associated with the Wakamatsu settlers, volunteers from mulberry trees (for sericulture) planted by the colonists, a keaki tree, and associated agricultural fields and pond. The area has maintained much of its agricultural rural setting. In 1869, on behalf of Matsudaira Katamori (a daimyo of the Tokugawa family from the Aizu Wakamatsu province of Japan), agent John Henry Schnell purchased land and buildings from Charles Graner to establish the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony. Schnell described the farm to the newspaper Alta California shortly after his arrival. He stated that he had purchased land, “a large orchard, thousands of bearing vines, grain fields, a good brick [sic] house well furnished, a barn, well-appointed wine house, implements of husbandry, horses, wagons, cows, pigs, fowl, and good and abundant water." Japanese colonists that arrived with Schnell planted and maintained mulberry trees and silkworm cocoons for silk farming, as well as tea plants and seeds. Dominant features of the landscape that remain, and convey the history of the short-lived colony are a residence, barn, associated vegetation, small pond, and agricultural fields. In 1873, Francis Veerkamp purchased the Wakamatsu Colony lands, after the colonist’s venture failed. His descendants have owned the property since that time, and maintained agricultural use of the property. | 
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 | During the dedication of the California Historical Landmark plaque in 1969, the Japanese American Citizens League and the California state government designated that year as the centennial of Japanese settlement in the continental United States. Van Sant (2000:118) summarizes the importance of the Wakamatsu Colony: " First, they established the largest Japanese enclave in the United States before the beginning of systematic Japanese immigration in the mid-1880s. Second, they were the first group of Japanese intending to permanently settle in the country. Finally, although they did not directly influence the process of emigration from Japan, they were the vanguard of Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants) to the United States." Of the 55 people of Japanese heritage documented by a United States census in 1870, 22 were settled at the Wakamatsu Colony in Gold Hill. The Wakamatsu colonists were from varying backgrounds, including members of the Japanese samurai (military) class, as well as laborers and craftsmen. Mary Schnell, the daughter of Jou and John Henry Schnell, was two months old at the time of the census, and the first child of a Japanese immigrant born in the U.S. At least one of the colonists moved to the nearby town of Coloma, and left documented descendants behind. The Wakamatsu colonists were the harbinger of later Issei migration to the mainland United States, and “signaled the coming of other Issei pioneers to California [and elsewhere] who would endure and persevere in the decades to come” (Maeda 2007). The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony Farm is an important symbol of the beginning of the story of Japanese immigration that occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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