Fish and History

Abundance of fish and wildlife plus other natural resources attract people from old time to live in Monterey Peninsula. Very little things are known about the First People who settled here. Several of their village sites have been identified and preserved.

Historical records indicate that Monterey was "discovered" again by Spanish on 1542. In December 1602, Sebastian Viscaino officially named the port "Monterey", in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain who had ordered his expedition. In 1776, Spain named Monterey as the capital of Baja (lower) and Alta (upper) California. In April, 1822, the people of Monterey learned that Mexico had seceded from Spain; California pledged allegiance to the Mexican Government. While Spain had not allowed foreigners to trade with California, Mexico opened up the area to international trade, and Monterey was made California’s sole port of entry. The booming trade, especially with New England, brought a number of Americans to Monterey. Many of them married into Mexican families, and became Mexican citizens. In 1842 the United States established a consulate in Monterey and Thomas Larkin was appointed its first consul.

In July, 1846, Commodore John Drake Sloat’s flagship arrived in Monterey Bay and his troops raised the American flag, claiming the region for the United States. This began a period of American occupation that lasted until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, making all of Alta California part of the United States. This included the land now known as California, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. In 1850, the U.S. Congress voted to adopt California as the thirty-first state of the Union.

The Monterey modern history is very closed link with sardine and cannery.

A Chinese fishing village was established in the early 1850's and was devastated by fire in 1906. Monterey's first major canning operation had begun next to "Fisherman's Wharf " when F.E. Booth's sardine canning experiment was matched with the skill of Sicilian fishermen and "lampara" fishing techniques. Booth's early development of sardine packing depended on innovative and inventive personnel, many of whom went on to own or operate other canneries, all of which were forced to locate away from the harbor, along a rocky stretch of coastline out toward the Chinatown near Pacific Grove.

The rutty, unpaved coastal road from Monterey to Pacific Grove grew to host the sardine factories that for half a century would dominate Monterey history and commerce. But decades of warnings and urgent appeals for study and conservation had been ignored, ridiculed and discredited. Wartime patriotic fervor had done little to encourage either conservation or attention to what scientists knew too well: Cannery was about to commit suicide. The last sardine catch was packed in 1964, with the last operating cannery, the Hovden Food Products Corp. (now the Monterey Bay Aquarium) closing its doors in 1973.