Fairplay Water System
One significant contribution made by the Chinese residents of Fairplay was to implement the "first water system."[1] For two dollars, a water carrier would fill a fifty-four-gallon barrel for any individual in town. This was accomplished by the use of a yoke, hung on either end with a five-gallon coal oil can. Many white residents fetched their own water from the "town ditch"[2] that was fed by a spring near Beaver Creek, a remnant of the placer mines of 1862.[3] If the water in the ditch became dirty or frozen, however, the townspeople had to either go down to the river themselves or utilize the Chinese water service.[4]
In 1879, a water carrier named Ah Yot was run over by a stagecoach. The stagecoach driver claimed that he had only intended to scare Ah Yot by driving the coach right up behind him. Ah Yot tried to move out of the way but he was knocked down and the carriage, filled with passengers, ran over him. The driver paid for Ah Yot's medical bills and the water carrier "eventually recovered."[5] It is not mentioned whether Ah Yot sustained any kind of injuries following the accident but, for someone who earned their living through manual labor, this very well could have spelled his doom, not just financially, but quite literally with the loss of his life.
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[1] Virgnina McConnell Simmons, Bayou Salado: the Story of South Park (Colorado Springs, CO: Century One Press, 1982), 159.
[2] Linda Bjorklund, A Brief History of Fairplay (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013), 71.
[3] Bjorklund, 49.
[4] Bjorklund, 49, 71.
[5] Bjorklund, 73.