Cannery Row - The Sardine Capital

Photo: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0 (cropped)

A stop on Monterey Cannery Row and Waterfront, a free self-guided tour.

You have reached the start of Cannery Row. For half a century this street was called Ocean View Avenue, and it smelled of fish, steam and money. The first major cannery opened in 1902, and demand for canned food during World War I set off a boom. By the early 1940s about 30 canneries and fish reduction plants lined the street, and boats brought in sardines by the ton.

Then the fish ran out. The catch fell from more than 142,000 tons in 1946 to under 27,000 the next year. Overfishing and changing ocean conditions are both blamed. One by one the canneries closed, and the last, the Hovden cannery, shut in 1973.

In 1958 the city officially renamed the street Cannery Row, after the 1945 John Steinbeck novel. As you walk on, look up for the enclosed bridges that once carried cans across the street from canneries to warehouses.

Getting here: Leave the trail at the end of San Carlos Beach and walk up onto Cannery Row, heading northwest away from the harbor.

Did you know?: Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck's scientist friend, tied the sardine collapse to overfishing and had a short answer for where the fish had gone: into cans.

Photo op: From the sidewalk, look up the street and frame the old cannery buildings with one of the bridges crossing overhead.

More on Wikipedia: Cannery Row · John Steinbeck · Cannery Row

Cannery Row - The Sardine Capital

Stops on this tour