Chew Kee Store Museum

The Chew Kee Store Museum in Fiddletown preserves one of the most authentic Chinese immigrant sites remaining from California’s Gold Rush period. Built by Chinese workers using traditional rammed-earth construction, the building’s thick two-foot earthen walls have endured for over 150 years. The store was founded in the mid-1850s by herb doctor Yee Fung Cheung, later operated by merchant and gambling house operator Chew Kee and his wife Sigh Choy in the 1880s, and occupied by their adopted son Jimmie Chow until his death in 1965.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 as part of the Fiddletown Historic District, the museum today is maintained by the Fiddletown Preservation Society. Volunteer docents guide visitors through interior spaces filled with original hand-hewn wood elements, furnishings, and artifacts that tell the story of the Chinese community that helped shape the Gold Country region.