Cannery Row 2007

This page was created as a resource for a ABC Hobart, Tasmania, Australia radio program that had Peter Newlinds on the Steinbeck trail. Read his online story here.

Snick Farkas poses in front of a welcome sign at a parking lot at David Avenue and Wave Street, near Cannery Row. This is where our walk begins.

Welcome to Cannery Row, Monterey, California

Cannery Row, the mile-long street that runs along the waterfront of Monterey Bay is best known as the setting for John Steinbeck's 1945 novel of the same name.

The street runs eight blocks, bordered on the Pacific Grove end by Hopkins Marine Station and on the Monterey end by the Coast Guard Pier (built in 1934). The street was originally known as Ocean View Avenue on the Monterey side, and was renamed "Cannery Row" in 1958, 13 years after Cannery Row and four years after Sweet Thursday were published. It was and is named Ocean View Blvd. on the Pacific Grove side.

What follows is a brief history of the area and an update on what to expect to find here in 2007.

The City of Monterey has developed a more in-depth historical walking tour of the Row, complete with historical photos, and you can find it here.

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." --Cannery Row

Use the tool at left to zoom in closer for more detail. Click on the red markers for information on each site.

We are walking downhill on David Avenue, toward Monterey Bay

The recreation trail that runs parallel to Cannery Row is a very popular place to skate, cycle, or walk. One-half block up from the Row itself, the trail hugs the coastline between Lovers Point in Pacific Grove and north through Monterey. The trail replaced the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the view at left looks north, where the trail straddles Pacific Grove and Monterey at David Street. If you follow the trail north (towards your right) about one mile to Drake Street, you would come to the site of Ed Ricketts' fatal car crash in 1948 with the Del Monte Express. Today, a bronze statue of Ricketts (by local artist Jesse Corsaut) commemorates that site.

See Don Bain's 360-degree full-screen panorama of the Ed Ricketts memorial at Drake and Wave streets.

Looking down David Avenue, on Cannery Row, is the Monterey Bay Aquarium
The Hovden Food Products Corp./Portola Packing Co. building (which operated from July 7, 1916 to February 9, 1973, and was the last operating cannery on the Row) is now occupied by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which opened to the public in 1984.

If you look to your right at this point in the walk, you will see the American Tin Cannery and Hopkins Marine Station.

The site of Hopkins is called China Point, and from the 1850s to 1906 was occupied by a Chinese fishing village, one of the largest on the West Coast. The industrious people who lived here fished for, dried and exported squid and other fish. Despite the intolerance they encountered from their neighbors, the Chinese flourished here until the night of May 16, 1906, when a devastating fire destroyed almost all of the village. There are more images of the Chinese Village here.

After a few years, a second village formed mid Row, along McAbee Beach -- between today's Prescott and Hoffman avenues -- on the site of an abandoned shore whaling operation.

The American Can Company, which produced many of the cans used by the local packing houses during the cannery's heydays, was built on the site of the first Chinese village. It is now the home of the American Tin Cannery Factory Outlets.

After you walk down to Cannery Row, turn right.

The yellow building at the right was Kalisa's Restaurant until recently, home of Monterey's premier belly dancing venue. This building traces its roots back as the inspiration for Steinbeck's La Ida Cafe.

Next door is the building that once housed Wing Chong's Market, the "miracle of supply" of Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

Directly across the street is the aquarium. You can get some sense of the magnitude of construction currently underway by the crane in the background.

A little further down the street, we encounter what looks like a Dalek.

Continuing on Cannery Row, and looking back towards the Aquarium, one can still feel the flavor of the era evoked by Steinbeck.

You can catch a glimpse of the old Wing Chong market sign on the rust-colored building to the left of the street light.

Continuing down Cannery Row, we approach Ed Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories (on the left, it is the small building nestled between a t-shirt shop and the hotel construction site).

For the last decade-and-a-half, this construction site was just some rebar in a weedy lot surrounded by a fence covered with artists' conceptions of the old Row. Now that the building has resumed and the space is closing in, the Row looks more claustrophobic, like it did in the heyday of the operating canneries.

Here is Ed "Doc" Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories (know as Western Biological in the books) at 800 Cannery Row. The doors of the lab, whose back touches Monterey Bay, were open when this photo was shot. It looked like they were setting up for an event.

After Ed Ricketts died, the lab became the home of a men's private club, whose members included local judges, businessmen, and artists. Three local cartoonists were members: Gus Arriola (Gordo), Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), and Eldon Dedini (Playboy, New Yorker, etc.). The building is now maintained by the City of Monterey, and ownership is transitioning to the City.

Another shot of the lab, without the trucks.

The basement of the lab from the Cannery Row side. This is where most of the actual preparation work for PBL's specimens was done. Ricketts and his family lived upstairs.

At this point, Cannery Row is closed to through traffic by the hotel construction. The new hotel will straddle the street, just as the old buildings did. When the street was an industrial center, the canneries were on the water side of the street, and the reduction plants -- where the offal from the fish was turned into fertilizer, paint, and other by products -- were on the uphill side. The reduction operations, rather than the canning plants, was what made the area smell so bad.

Cross Cannery Row at Ed's Lab and you will see

The short walkway up from the Row to the recreation trail is named Bruce Ariss Way, in honor of the Monterey artist who was part of Steinbeck and Ricketts' circle. He was part of the group that socialized at the lab. This is a mural panel by Ariss that was originally part of a larger grouping (by Monterey-area artists) along the waterfront. The other mural panels were removed when construction on the hotel next to the lab resumed in 2006-7.

Also across from Ricketts' lab, at the base of Bruce Ariss Way, is an interpretive sign about Ed and the Row.

Further up the hill (the chicken walk of Cannery Row), are three workers' cottages which show what the average worker's housing looked like. They have been moved to this site.

A little further uphill, you can see Ed's lab from the front of the cottages.

The area at the top of Bruce Ariss Way is the probable site of Mack and the boys' Palace Flophouse.

Across the rec trail is another interpretive sign.

When you reach the top of Bruce Ariss Way, you are on the rec trail. Turn left, follow the trail to Prescott Avenue, and head up to Wave Street

At 701 Wave Street, you'll see the long awning leading to the entrance of the Sardine Factory Restaurant. It was immortalized in the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie, Play Misty for Me, as the location where Eastwood's character picks up Jessica Walter's character.

Continue across Prescott

You are now across from a number of old cannery buildings. This view is looking back down towards the Row. There is a bronze statue of Steinbeck in the plaza at the foot of Prescott.

This is the center of the same block of Wave, across from the Monterey City parking lot where you can get the best chance at long-term parking near the Row. Oh no, another Dalek!

2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of Cannery Row, and the street has seen many changes since then. The overpowering smell of the reduction plants--which caused a great deal of contention between Monterey and P.G. and inspired the saying "Carmel-by-the-Sea, Monterey-by-the-Smell, and Pacific Grove-by-God"-- is gone now, and tourism has replaced the canning and reduction of sardines as the main industry.

Even with all the changes, the popularity of Steinbeck's work endures, and his readers are apt to hear the strains of church music from Doc's phonograph wafting over the Row.