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Named by the Spanish merchant and explorer Vizcaino
in 1602, MONTEREY was not colonized until 1770,
founded as the military and admini-strative center of a territory
that extended east to the Rockies and north to Canada (with a
non-native population of less than seven thousand). By the mid-nineteenth
century era of the US takeover and the Gold Rush, Monterey had
become a forgotten backwater, hardly affected by the fresh waves
of California immigration.
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 10am3pm; $5), leaving hourly
from the park's Stanton Center.
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 the walking 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 Mexico,
is credited with developing the now-common Monterey style of architecture,
mixing adobe walls, balconies of Greek Revival Southern plantations
and a Yankee taste for ornament. The house, the first two-story
adobe in California, is filled with millions of dollars' worth
of antiques and memorabilia, and is surrounded by gorgeous gardens
as well.
The Stevenson House , a short way
east at 530 Houston St (entry as for Larkin House), is filled
with memorabilia of Scottish author 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 Colonial Revival Pacific House (daily 10am5pm;
$2) has been a courthouse, rooming house and dance hall 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
historic balconies of the Customs House (daily
10am5pm; free), the oldest governmental building on the west coast,
with portions built by Spain in 1814, Mexico in 1827, and the
US in 1846 though it hasn't collected duties for 135 years.
A bike path runs the two miles
to Pacific Grove, along Cannery Row named after
John Steinbeck's literary 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, and now teem with tourists instead of
fish.
