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.
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.
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.
