And one export carries the city's name into every grocery store in America: Monterey Jack. The mild cheese descends from the queso del país made on the Mexican-era ranchos, and it took its name from David Jacks, the Scottish-born land baron who came to control much of the peninsula — he acquired the town's own pueblo lands at a courthouse auction Monterey never forgave — and began shipping the local cheese under his name in the 1880s. The city's registry of firsts lists California's first marketed cheese at Monterey in 1859, and Jacks Peak, the highest point on the peninsula, still carries the family name. The cheese outlived the grudge.
South of town the land turns wild at Point Lobos, the granite-and-cypress headland often called the crown jewel of California's state parks, where sea otters raft in the kelp and the surf breaks white against the rocks. Monterey Bay itself is a drowned submarine canyon — deep, cold, and astonishingly rich with life — which is why the old Hovden cannery at the end of the Row was reborn in 1984 as a place to look at the sea instead of empty it. The same water that built the canneries now draws people to watch whales and otters in it.
Why People Visit Monterey
Monterey rewards visitors who want the original California — the first capital, a town of 18th-century adobes, and a deep, wild bay. People come for the Path of History and Cannery Row, for Point Lobos and the marine sanctuary, and for an easy, scenic stretch of Central Coast where Spanish-colonial heritage and a famous waterfront sit side by side.
