Monterey (Monterey Peninsula)
Once a rowdy town of sailors and fishermen centered around legendary Cannery Row (chronicled in detail by John Steinbeck), Monterey is now a magnet for tourism, with restaurants, shops, and attractions lining its waterfront.
Capital of California during both the Spanish and Mexican periods, Monterey played host to the 1849 constitutional convention that led to U.S. statehood. The city became a tourist resort when the elegant Del Monte Hotel opened in 1880, and after the turn of the century it prospered as the "Sardine Capital of the World." (Visitor Center, 401 Camino El Estero. 408-649-1770).
Though named by Vizcaino in 1602, MONTEREY was not colonized until 1770, as the military, administrative and commercial center of a territory that extended east to the Rockies and north to Canada (with a nonnative population of less than seven thousand). With the conjunction of the US takeover and the Gold Rush, Monterey suddenly became a backwater, hardly affected by the waves of immigration that followed.
Impressive vernacular colonial buildings now stand unassumingly in the compact town center, within a few blocks of the tourist-thronged waterfront. A loosely organized Path of History connects the 37 sites of the Monterey State Historic Park. Most can’t be entered unless you’re part of a ninety-minute guided historic walking tour (daily every hour from 10am–3pm; $5), leaving from the Maritime Museum, near the waterfront at the foot of Alvarado Street.
The best place to get a feel for life in old Monterey is the Larkin House, on Jefferson Street a block south of Alvarado (entered only as part of a tour), home of the first and only American Consul to California. The New England-born Thomas Larkin, who was influential in persuading the Californians to turn towards the US and away from the erratic government of Mexico, is credited with developing the now-common Monterey style of architecture, combining local adobe walls and the balconies of a Southern plantation home with a puritan Yankee’s taste in ornament. The house, the first two-story adobe in California, is filled with millions of dollars’ worth of antiques, and the gorgeous surrounding gardens are open all day.
The Stevenson House, a short way east at 530 Houston St (entry as for Larkin House, above), is filled with memorabilia of Robert Louis Stevenson, who passed through in 1879 and foresaw that Monterey’s Mexican-influenced lifestyle was no match for the “Yankee craft” of the “millionaire vulgarians of the Big Bonanza.” At the foot of the otherwise tacky Fisherman’s Wharf, the Pacific House (daily 10am–5pm; free) has been a courthouse, a rooming house and a dance hall in the years since its construction in 1847, and is now the best of the local museums, with displays on Monterey history and a pretty fair collection of Native American artifacts. While in the area, wander by the balconied Customs House (daily 10am–5pm; free), the oldest governmental building on the West Coast, with portions built by Spain in 1814, Mexico in 1827, and the US in 1846.
A bike path runs the two miles to Pacific Grove, along Cannery Row – named after John Steinbeck’s portrait of the rough-and-ready workers of its fish canneries. During World War II some 200,000 tons of sardines were caught and canned each year, but the stocks were exhausted by 1945. The abandoned canneries reopened in the 1970s as malls and restaurants, which now teem with tourists.
The engaging Monterey Bay Aquarium, a mile west of town at the end of Cannery Row (daily 10am–6pm; tel 831/648-4888 or 1-800/756-3737; $15.95), is one of the largest, most stunning displays of underwater life in the world. Book tickets well in advance and allow a day for your visit. Museum highlights include a 335,000 gallon Kelp Forest tank, a touch pool where you can pet bat rays, a pool of sea otters, and a stunning jellyfish exhibit which uses the latest lighting technology to bring out the creatures’ myriad colors.
Visitors can tread the Path of History around the waterfront and old downtown, seeing adobe houses and museums. The hub is the 7-acre Monterey State Historic Park (Custom House Plaza. 408-649-7118. Ask about combination tickets), which has a number of different sites. Begin your tour at Stanton Center, which offers visitor information, a walking tour brochure, and a short history film. It also houses the Maritime Museum of Monterey (408-373-2469. Adm. fee), with ship models, whaling artifacts, and a thousand-prism lighthouse lens.
California's oldest public building, the adobe Custom House was the financial hub of Alta California (Mexico's northern province) from 1822 until 1846; it collected shipping duties and traded in "California bank notes," or cowhides. The building contains 1830s-type cargo. The 1839 Larkin House (510 Calle Principal. Closed Tues. and Thurs.; adm. fee) shows how New England architecture blended with Mexican, creating a style popular after the 1920s known as Monterey colonial. Furnishings include the desk of merchant, secret agent, and U.S. consul Thomas Larkin.
A sea captain built the Cooper-Molera Complex (525 Polk St. Closed Mon.; adm. fee), which depicts life in the mid-1800s through an adobe house, carriage house, barn, and plantings authentic to the period. At the Robert Louis Stevenson House (530 Houston St. Closed Mon.; adm. fee) the Scottish author was a roomer in 1879 while courting Fanny Osbourne; personal memorabilia include Stevenson's dining room furniture and books.
Other sites along the Path of History include Colton Hall (522 Pacific St. 408-646-5640), where delegates gathered in 1849 to draft California's first constitution; visitors see the table where the document was signed. Out back is the granite Old Monterey County Jail (1854-1956). Finally, all that remains of Spain's original military enclave is the stone-and-adobe Royal Presidio Chapel (Church and Figueroa Sts.). Built in 1795, it is the oldest structure in Monterey and the state's last original presidio chapel.
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