Monterey is the Adobe Capital of California, and the proof is still standing. The 1794 Royal Presidio Chapel is the oldest building in town and the first architect-designed building in California. A short walk away runs the Path of History, a trail of thick-walled adobes from the Spanish and Mexican decades — the Custom House, California's oldest government building, where the United States flag first rose over the territory; Colton Hall, where the constitution was written; the Larkin House and the Cooper-Molera adobe. The low, deep-eaved Monterey-Colonial style was born here, and it carries the town's name to this day.
The waterfront tells a different century. Monterey was a Chinese, Japanese, and Sicilian fishing village before the sardine canneries arrived around 1900 and turned the shoreline into an industrial machine. At its peak Cannery Row ran two dozen canneries and reduction plants, and for a while Monterey was one of the busiest fishing ports in the Western Hemisphere — the street later made famous by the Monterey novelist John Steinbeck. When the fishery collapsed at mid-century the canneries closed, and the buildings waited decades for their second life as the Row you walk today.
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.
