TWHP


Monterey, The Custom House   

Gaspar de Portola founded Monterey as a military post in 1770, and Father Junipero Serra built a mission in the area the next year, the latter which was eventually moved to Carmel. The administrative capitol for the Southwest, Monterey served as the primary port of entry to Spanish and Mexican California.

Thomas Larkin, the first American Consul in California, resided there, and Robert Semple published the province's first newspaper from Monterey, in 1846; the first issue of The Californian carried news of the Mexican War and expressed his hope that the region would become American. It did, in the same year, when Commodore John Sloat came ashore and claimed the territory for the United States, and the town's Colton Hall served as the venue for the first California Constitutional Convention in 1849.

Abandoned as a capitol after coming under American control, Monterey briefly became the center and port of the rich, agricultural lands of the surrounding area, then full of cattle, much in demand in the years immediately after the Gold Rush. In 1872, Salinas superseded it, becoming the county seat and the railroad outlet for the newly burgeoning crops.

Monterey eventually evolved into a whaling and fishing port, huge canneries lining the broad bay, all to be memorialized in the works of John Steinbeck in the 1930s.


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