Sicilians and their “lampara” net fishing techniques, coupled

with the inventive genius of a Norwegian immigrant with

fishing industry experience, Knut Hovden, began a decade of

improvement in the technology of both fishing and canning

that positioned Monterey's burgeoning sardine industry for rapid

and enormous expansion due to food and ration demands created

by World War I. A major recession after recovered gradually into

the “Roaring Twenties” and the stench of sardine processing--

especially the grinding and baking of even edible sardines into

fishmeal--became the controversial smell of prosperity.

     Monterey's fishing and canning industries limped through the

Great Depression. Food, at least in the sardine business, was not in

critical supply. But the deprivations and hardships of the 1930’s

set the stage on a street lined with sardine factories for one of the

best read stories ever to emerge from American literature: John

Steinbeck's “Cannery Row.” In the intellectual company of

pioneering marine biologist Edward F. Ricketts and his friends on

old Ocean View Avenue in the early 1930’s, John Steinbeck lived

first-hand the scenes and locations of his charming (if only slightly

fictional) accounts of life and times on Cannery Row by one of the

most colorful cast of characters in American literature.

     The canning boom driven by World War II saw Monterey

become “The Sardine Capitol of the World,” processing nearly a

quarter million tons of sardines a season in its peak wartime

years--to less than 1,000 tons per season in the mid 1950’s. The

sardines had disappeared! Economic devastation settled in on

Monterey's fishing and canning industries, ending it forever as

Monterey’s major economic engine. Years of decline,

disintegration, fire, and collapse set in on a street that had no

other immediate usefulness to a fish canning industry without

fish.
     But the curious came, to see “Cannery Row” and experience its

funky, ghostlike revival as a tourist attraction--due largely to the

magic of the fame Steinbeck's fiction bestowed upon it. Today,

Cannery Row enjoys a commercial, historical, and literary

renaissance as the major tourism destination in Monterey. An

eclectic array of fine restaurants, hotels, activities, and shopping

of every kind abound to serve the millions of visitors to Cannery

Row each year on the once dusty coastal road. The street was

officially renamed Cannery Row in 1958, in honor of its Steinbeck

fame--a street who's future is inseparable from its literary and

historical heritage.

Thank you Michael. Thank you John.    - A.W.

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