Reduction and the Depression: Fish or Jobs. Permitting huge quantities of edible sardines to become fish meal and fertilizer helped sustain an industry and a work force in Monterey through the Great Depression, but with disastrous consequences which would soon become evident. Two-thirds of a billion sardines a year were turned into fertilizer.

World War II cannery expansion: Monterey became “Sardine Capital of the World” as it fed a world at war with the plentiful and nutritious Monterey sardine. Within five years the industry would die on its waterfront for lack of sardines. The Monterey Cannery & Warehouse buildings, located at 700 and 711 Cannery Row, are now […]

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck told of the exploits of a band of bums on Cannery Row, surrounded by bordellos, flophouses, a Chinese grocery store and the laboratory of a man who, in reality, was quietly revolutionizing modern marine biology: Ed Ricketts – the “Doc” of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.

Early “New Row” business pioneers: restaurateurs Neil DeVaughn 1953; Kalisa Moore and her “La Ida Cafe” (in Cannery Row) 1958, and Dick O’Kane and his landmark Warehouse Restaurant 1963 – early leaders in a wave of change.

Ted Balestreri & Bert Cutino, experienced Monterey restaurant managers open their own upscale venture “on the wrong side of the tracks” – Cannery Row – with the Sardine Factory Restaurant, starting today’s “Restaurant Row.”

The Monterey Bay Aquarium opens at the Hovden Cannery site, its approach to marine biology embracing the direction set in motion by Ed Ricketts, the fictional “Doc” in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row works.

The magnificent oceanfront Monterey Plaza Hotel opens on the Tevis Estate site in a return to the early grandeur and elegance of Ocean View Avenue, the original name of the street which, in 1958, was officially renamed Cannery Row.