Sierra Azul Nursery is a retail plant nursery in the heart of agricultural Pajaro Valley specializing in Mediterranean-climate plants from around the world. The nursery includes two acres of demonstration gardens accented by sculptures from local artists. The gardens allow customers to see plants as they will appear full-grown in a garden setting. A series of loamy sand, boulder, and...
Monterey County Agricultural & Rural Life Museum (MCARLM) in San Lorenzo County Park outside King City celebrates the history of southern Salinas Valley. In addition to the Main Exhibit Barn and a History of Irrigation Museum, the complex includes three buildings from the time period of East of Eden. A Spreckels Company House (1898), a one room schoolhouse from La...
John Ernst Steinbeck died in New York City on December 20, 1968. In accordance with his wish, Elaine Steinbeck returned her husband’s ashes to California for burial in his home town. They were interred in a plot together with his mother, father, sister Mary, and Uncle Will. Elaine joined them in 2003. This is one of two Hamilton family plots...
Monterey County Historical Society moved this little red schoolhouse from the original site on San Juan Grade Road to the Boronda Adobe History Center in 1986. This is the schoolhouse Jody attended in The Red Pony. It is also the building where Steinbeck’s neighbor Edith Wagner, the little girl in the story “How Edith McGillicuddy Met RLS”, once taught school....
“Sugar King” Claus Spreckels built the world’s largest sugar beet refinery on the banks of the Salinas River in 1899. He hired prominent Watsonville-based architect, William H. Weeks to design a company town to house workers and their families. Spreckels has been described as one of the best-preserved company towns in the country. Except for the plant manager’s house all...
Who wouldn’t want to golf on bluffs at ocean’s edge? That’s probably what the Del Monte Properties Company (run by by a distant cousin of telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse) had in mind when they acquired much the Del Monte Forest back in 1919. They soon opened Pebble Beach Golf Links and The Lodge at Pebble Beach, and they’ve been...