But Monterey's deeper claim is older and grander: this is where California began. Before Sacramento, before the gold, Monterey was the capital — first of Spanish Alta California from 1777, then of Mexican California, the one seat of government the territory kept under three flags. And in 1849, when California was about to become a state, the delegates met here at Colton Hall to write its first constitution. For most of a century the business of California was done in this town of whitewashed adobe on the edge of a deep blue bay, and Monterey collected the territory's firsts almost by default — the first theater, the first brick house, and the first printing press and newspaper in California all began here.
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.
