ROCK SPRINGS, WYO — Towering plateaus dotted with sage brush and roaming wild horses surround the desert town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, with a population of about 23,000.

A short drive from Main Street, two rectangular holes form a checkerboard pattern in a grassy lawn connecting a Catholic church with a nearby schoolyard. Six Grinnell College researchers spent the summer here digging, scraping and screening the soil , most of whom have never been to Wyoming before.

The Iowa-based researchers are looking for artifacts from when a mob burned down what was once the Rock Springs Chinatown.

In 1885, labor tensions boiled over in the Union Pacific Railroad's coal mines, stemming from an argument over who had the best work opportunities. The mob, many of them European migrants, blamed

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