[Ads-l] Antedating "hophead"

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:15 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Is "Hop" a Chinese word?
>

I don't know. However, Saint Louis's original Chinatown, long since buried
under what was once Busch Stadium, was known not as "Chinatown," but as
"_Hop_ Alley."

Gateway Heritage: Quarterly Journal of the Missouri Historical Society.
1996-1997, Volume 17
https://books.google.com/books?id=rPATAQAAMAAJ
1996 - ‎Snippet view
Hop Alley, St. Louis's Chinese district, though smaller than coastal
Chinatowns, provided local experience in dealing with a Chinese
population...

Green's Dictionary:

hop alley

1909  University Missourian (Columbia, MO) 18 Sept. 4/2: Chinese Reporter
Exposes ‘Hop Alley’ [...] Opium orgies in St Louis Chinatown.

By coincidence, Denver, CO's Chinatown was also known as "Hop Alley."

The Wildest of the West - Page 108
https://books.google.com/books?id=eCnWAAAAMAAJ
Forbes Parkhill - 1957 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
WHEN the Kansas Pacific Railroad was completed to Denver in 1870, members
of a gang of Chinese-coolie track-laborers were discharged, forming the
first inhabitants of the city's Chinatown, later known as "Hop Alley."

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org