John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row made Monterey’s actual Cannery Row neighborhood famous worldwide. While today’s Cannery Row is known for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, fantastic restaurants, and eclectic boutiques and shops, Steinbeck’s version of the neighborhood presents a grittier microcosm of society in the old sardine canning district.
Whether you’re a California history buff, literature fanatic, or tourist, Cannery Row makes for an interesting and underrated stop on California’s Central Coast.
Steinbeck’s vision of Cannery Row
John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row novel takes place during the Great Depression in Monterey, California. The story follows the eccentric lives and camaraderie of residents on a run-down waterfront street, told via a loose plot presented through vignettes and anecdotes. It’s an affectionate depiction of outcasts and misfits who are often overlooked by society, portraying them as resilient embodiments of humanity.
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 is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen’ and he would have meant the same thing.” – John Steinbeck, Cannery Row (1945)
At the time of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, the actual street was named Ocean View Avenue, and it was home to a thriving sardine canning industry for the first half of the twentieth century. In 1958, the city renamed it as “Cannery Row” in honor of Steinbeck’s work and to attract tourists, especially as the sardine industry declined.
Cannery Row today
Today, Cannery Row is a vibrant tourist destination with numerous historic sites and modern-day amenities. Entrepreneurs and city leaders have converted the old industrial spaces into more than 25 restaurants, wine bars, shops, and attractions, interspersed with public art and monuments that pay tribute to John Steinbeck.
The internationally-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium is located on Cannery Row, welcoming approximately 2 million visitors per year who come to see some of the most impressive aquarium exhibits in the world. Steinbeck enthusiasts can also visit the Pacific Biological Laboratory, once the workplace of Ed Ricketts, who inspired the character of “Doc” in Cannery Row.
Visiting Cannery Row from San Francisco
Cannery Row is located about 120 miles south of San Francisco, or a two-hour drive depending on traffic. Many travelers prefer the scenic route down Highway 1, which offers fantastic views of the California coast through towns like Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, and Carmel.