Monterey’s first commercial fish canning shed opened in 1902, the year of Steinbeck’s birth. Stimulated by World War I demands, salmon and abalone packing operations soon expanded to sardine canning. Dozens of canneries opened along Ocean View Avenue to process about a billion fish per season at the peak. This business generated huge profits until the late 1940s when over-fishing...
Set in a forest of oaks and pines overlooking a white sand beach, Carmel-by-the-Sea is one of California’s most popular tourist destinations. Art galleries, restaurants, boutiques, and proximity to Pebble Beach golf resorts attract an upscale clientele to the one square mile village of quaint cottages, leafy lanes and multimillion dollar second homes. As Steinbeck noted in Travels with Charley,...
Steinbeck purchased writing materials and household items from Holman’s Department Store in Pacific Grove. Green ink on sale at 5¢ for two lasted to page 167 of his manuscript for To A God Unknown. The sale being over, blue ink for the remainder cost 10¢ a bottle. He later paid 82¢ for a ledger notebook for The Pastures of Heaven....
The capital of Spanish California, Monterey’s downtown State Historic Park preserves a rich heritage of adobe buildings dating from that era. The regional tourism industry developed around the Hotel Del Monte resort and began a long association with artistic, literary, and entertainment characters. The Cannery Row sardine canning district that dominated local business and politics in the first half of...
The Monterey Bay Aquarium may be one of the few changes to Cannery Row that would be deemed an improvement by Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. Built on the bones of Hovden’s, one of the largest and earliest canneries along the Row, with more than 1 million visitors annually the aquarium is Monterey’s major tourist attraction and a world class marine...
Point Pinos Lighthouse beacon has flashed a warning to shipping at the dangerous southern entrance to Monterey Bay since February 1855. It is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the West Coast and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Steinbeck used the lighthouse and its setting overlooking rugged Point Pinos (Point of the Pines) in several novels and...
The National Steinbeck Center is located in a distinctive building owned by California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) at the head of Main Street. The Center comprises a museum and archives that celebrates the writer’s life, works, characters, and region in an informative and entertaining manner. Highlights of his best loved stories are recreated through dioramas, interactive exhibits, videos, public...