The City of Missoula and a pair of documentary filmmakers unveiled a plaque June 6 for a previously unmarked Chinese cemetery that’s lain beneath the Lower Rattlesnake for over 100 years.

The installation came after a 2023 city council resolution spearheaded by Councilor Dan Carlino and prompted by the historical work of Paul Kim and Max Cumming for their 2024 documentary “The Bodies Beneath Us.”

According to Kim’s research, Chinese community members have long existed in Missoula, but have often been marginalized and actively erased from history.

When the Lower Rattlesnake cemetery fell into disrepair, prominent white Missoulians were relocated to the Westside while the bodies of nonwhites, many of which were Chinese, were left to lie beneath growing urban development.

In 1882, the Chi

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