John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row immortalized the sardine-canning business that was Monterey’s lifeblood for the first half of the 20th century. A bronze bust of the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer sits at the bottom of Prescott Ave, just steps from the unabashedly touristy experience that the famous row has devolved into. The historical Cannery Workers Shacks at the base of flowery Bruce Ariss Way provide a sobering reminder of the hard lives led by Filipino, Japanese, Spanish and other immigrant laborers.
Back in Steinbeck’s day, Cannery Row was a stinky, hardscrabble, working-class melting pot, which the novelist described as ‘a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.’ Sadly, there’s precious little evidence of that era now, as overfishing and climatic changes caused the sardine industry’s collapse in the 1950s.
