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San Francisco has a long and interesting history with laundry service. 

In 1849 at the height of the gold rush, men would actually send their clothes all the way to Hawaii and even China to be laundered! It sounds incredible but because water was so expensive and the ratio of men to women in San Francisco at the time was so skewed, China, shockingly, became the most practical option.

According to the 1850 U.S. California Census, only 4.5% of the entire California population was female. At the time, laundry was perceived as a task that only women should do, which left a huge gap between the supply of launderers and the demand for clean clothes.

During the 1850s, there was also a large wave of immigration from China. In the United States, the Chinese population rose from 2,716 in 1851 to 63,000 by 1871, with 77% living and working in California.

In part due to discrimination which kept the newly immigrated Chinese from other types of work and partly due to a gap in the laundry service market, entrepreneurial Chinese immigrants built a booming laundry industry in San Francisco. San Francisco’s first laundries popped up around Washerwoman’s Lagoon – a pond that was located in what is now the Marina district of San Francisco!

People still hate doing laundry, and laundry continues to evolve. Where San Franciscans used to send their clothes all the way to China, now you can have your Dry Cleaning and Wash & Fold delivered straight to your door.