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Williams, drawing from historical research, oral histories, and publications such as Sandy Lydon’s Chinese Gold, offers this history:

In the 1850s, Chinese immigrants sailed onto the Monterey Bay, where they promptly set to work fishing and building a community. After frustrated attempts to settle at Point Lobos and Pescadero Point they established a village near Point Alones, on the coastal border between Pacific Grove and Monterey.

The first local Feast of Lanterns celebration was held in July 1905 at the end of the “Chautaqua season,” when adults would congregate for educational presentations organized by the Methodist-run Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle of Pacific Grove. During that first feast, participants decorated the town’s buildings and roads with paper lanterns and gathered to watch fishing boats lit up by glowing charcoal baskets – not unlike those the Chinese fishermen used to lure squid – float across the water at dusk. Chinese residents were invited in order to “lend authenticity” to the celebration, according to a 1905 article in the Monterey New Era newspaper.

Simultaneously, some of PG’s white residents went out of their way to make their Chinese neighbors feel unwelcome. Portuguese whalers made a practice of cutting the fishermen’s nets. Police, responding to complaints from citizens or the mayor, routinely arrested the Chinese for creating a “public nuisance” by drying squid – a smelly practice that was eventually banned. In the 1880s Congress adopted the Chinese Exclusion Act to staunch the inflow of Asian immigrants, and over the next two decades the state imposed ever-tighter restrictions on Chinese fishing.

In 1905 the Pacific Improvement Company, which owned the Point Alones property, failed to renew the Chinese community’s lease and began to evict its tenants. That process was underway on May 16, 1906, when a fire ignited in the village, burning down most of its wood-framed houses. Historians haven’t confirmed the origins of the fire, but oral evidence – including a testimony that the residents’ hoses were cut – points to arson. Photographs show whites picking through the ashes within 24 hours of the blaze.

The Point Alones residents unsuccessfully challenged their eviction in court; some staged a brief sit-in in the few buildings that remained standing. The expelled fishermen didn’t have much luck relocating within Pacific Grove, Williams says, because most properties had racially restrictive covenants. Low-Sabado’s great-grandfather, reportedly the last to leave, moved his family to Monterey.

Despite the turmoil at Point Alones, the Chautauqua group held its second annual Oriental-themed celebration that summer. The Pacific Improvement Company donated hundreds of dollars to the festivities, even as it built a fence around the Point Alones village and hired armed guards to keep the Chinese out.