Workers' Shacks - Homes of the Cannery Crews
A stop on Monterey Cannery Row and Waterfront, a free self-guided tour.
Turn up the narrow lane called Bruce Ariss Way and you will find three tiny cabins. Each is a single room, yet in the busy season as many as four men might share one. Shacks like these once dotted the waterfront by the hundred, housing the people who did the hard, smelly work of catching and canning sardines.
The city moved these three here from nearby Wave Street in the early 1990s and furnished them to show who lived in them between the 1920s and 1940s. One is set up for Japanese fishermen and cannery workers, one for Filipino workers who came from Luzon, and one for Spanish workers. Many were single men who followed the seasons, canning fish here in fall and winter, then picking fruit and vegetables in the inland valleys when the sardine season ended.
Peek through the windows at the simple furnishings, and imagine the noise of the canneries just down the hill.
Getting here: Continue a few steps along Cannery Row, then turn uphill into the narrow pedestrian lane called Bruce Ariss Way.
Did you know?: The lane carries the name of Bruce Ariss, a painter, muralist and writer who was a friend of Steinbeck and Ricketts and designed a 1989 mural project for this walkway.
Photo op: From the lane, frame the three little cabins side by side.
More on Wikipedia: Cannery Row · Filipino Americans · Japanese Americans
Stops on this tour
- Old Fisherman's Wharf - Where Monterey Meets the Bay
- Custom House - Where California Became American
- Coastal Recreation Trail - Riding the Old Rails
- Coast Guard Pier - Sea Lion Central
- San Carlos Beach - From Cannery to Kelp Forest
- Cannery Row - The Sardine Capital
- McAbee Beach - Monterey's Chinese Fishermen
- Steinbeck Plaza - Cannery Row in Bronze
- Pacific Biological Laboratories - Doc's Lab
- Workers' Shacks - Homes of the Cannery Crews
- Monterey Bay Aquarium - A Cannery Reborn