Marine scientist Ed Ricketts explored tide pools from Alaska to Mexico searching for specimens for his Pacific Biological Laboratories business and for insight into the relationships between all living things. Eric Enno Tamm wrote in Beyond the Outer Shores: “Arguably more than any scientist of his time, Ed Ricketts saw the tide pool as the place where celestial and worldly...
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...
Trees now shade paved sidewalks and sleek automobiles have replaced boxy, black Fords but it does not take much imagination to see Main Street as Steinbeck portrayed it in East of Eden. At the height of its prosperity this was a bustling district of banks, hotels, and stores. Today’s most active businesses are restaurants catering to visitors to the Maya...
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...