People were here long before any of that. The Costanoan, or Ohlone, lived on Monterey Bay for thousands of years before the first ship arrived. A Spanish expedition under Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed in in 1602 and named the harbor for the Count of Monte Rey; the name stuck, though no one came back to settle for another 168 years. Then on June 3, 1770, Gaspar de Portolá and Father Junípero Serra came ashore and founded the presidio and mission that became the town — the mission itself moving south to neighboring Carmel the following year.
Our Monterey logo carries California's grizzly bear and lone star above “California Republic — Est. 1850,” the shared retro emblem of our California places, drawn in worn black-and-white like an old crate label or cannery stamp. The 1850 marks the year Monterey was incorporated as a city — the same year California became a state. The bear is the through-line that links Monterey to every other California town we make; what makes this one Monterey is everything around it — the first capital, the adobes, the canneries, and the bay.
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.
