Historic Sights in Monterey

It begins here. This is the Presidio Chapel, the oldest continuously operating Church Parish in California. The first mission in Alta California was to be placed at Monterey, but Father Serra knew he needed to keep soldiers separated from Indian women if there was to be harmony with his hoped-for converts. So the mission moved over the hill to Carmel. The soldiers needed a church in which to attend mass, so this Chapel was built. It still stands on the very hill where priests and soldiers set up camp in the summer of 1770.

When the US Government re-opened the Presidio after the Spanish-American war, it was moved to its present location outside of downtown.

Sandy Lydon cozies up to an old pal: Father Junipero Serra.

Quock Mui is an overlooked, but pivotal figure in the history of Monterey. Her parents survived a terrifying voyage of emigration by seagoing junk from Manila. Their boat was the only one of five that survived the trip. Dismasted, it washed up on the beach at the mouth of the Carmel River in 1851. Indians, who then had a village on the south bank of the river (there's a shopping center and a gas station there now) nursed the new arrivals back to health.

The Quock family and other Chinese built little cabins on the northwest side of what we now call Whaler's cove in Point Lobos State Reserve, where they made a living by fishing. Mui was born eight years later, possibly in the last remaining of the Chinese cabin, which is now known erroneously as the "Whalers Cabin." If not in that cabin, it was in a similar one alongside. As California had become a state in 1850, Quock Mui was a US citizen by birth. During her childhood she lived in an amazingly poly-cultural community ringing the cove: There were her family and their countrymen, whalers from the Azores who spoke Portuguese, English-speaking Yankees who had quarried granite from the hill and later used the cove as a place to transfer coal to schooners, and Indians who spoke their own Rumsien tongue as well as the common language of Spanish.

Quock Mui learned to speak all five of these languages. She lived in town in Monterey as an adult, and her extraordinary skills as a linguist often put her in demand as a go-between among members of different ethnic groups in the city. The house she inhabited as and adult also still stands, with no special marking, near Cannery Row. Her descendants still live in California.

The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey was once the Hotel Del Monte. This structure, built in the late 1920's, is third hotel of the same name built on the site. The first two burned. The first one, opened in 1880 by the Pacific Improvement Corporation, (a subsidiary of the SP Railroad) created a reason for upscale tourists to ride the rail line to Monterey. It was a world-class hotel with meticulously landscaped gardens, some of which are still there to see. Guests usually spent at least one day taking a carraige ride along the 17-Mile Drive, created by the company as a scenic attraction. The original hotel burned in 1887, and was rebuilt the next year. The second structure burned in 1926. Some say the third building is haunted by the ghost of the fire chief who failed to save the original hotel in 1887.

These small silver fish are Anchovies, which periodically appear in and around Monterey Bay in huge schools. Six or seven decades ago, another small silver fish, the sardine, spawned a burgeoning industry in Monterey. Sardine fishing and sardine canneries were big business up until the 1960s. Cannery Row was built, immortalized by John Steinbeck, and by the 1970s had fallen into decay.

Why? No more sardines. Whether it was overfishing, climate change, some other environmental factor, or a combination, nobody knows. But the reason there isn't a photo of a school of sardines above this caption is because they haven't been seen in these parts in many years.

Today's Sardine? This is a "Market Squid," about 10 inches long, laying her eggs on the sandy floor of Monterey Bay. Squid fishing in Monterey was pioneered, perhaps even invented, by Chinese living on Point Alones, the current site of Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. The Chinese used small, oar powered wooden boats and netted squid attracted to pine pitch torches. Today, diesel boats use halogen lights and winch netted squid aboard by the ton. Can the squid population survive in the long term as so many of them are taken from their spawning ground? For that matter, how many squid are out there, and are their numbers growing or shrinking. Nobody knows the answers to these questions, but the squid boats usually come home full... so far.

Gennosuke Kodani is a key figure in the development of Point Lobos, and the abalone industry that flourished there for roughly forty years. Educated in Marine Biology in Japan, he began the abalone diving industry in Point Lobos in 1898.

Some of his descendants now operate the Sunrise Market in Monterey.

Grave marker of George Kodani, with his picture.

Grave marker of George Kodani, reverse showing inscription.

Grave marker of David Jacks, who owned more land in Monterey County than almost anyone. He had title to the entire Del Monte forest until he sold it to the SP for $6 an acre. We don’t know if he was acquainted with Frederick Hihn. “He who dies with the most toys... is dead.”
	Grave marker of James & Loreta Meadows, parents of Isabella Meadows. Isabella learned to speak Rumsien from her mother and their housekeeper, both of whom were Indians converted in the Mission. She lived to be one of the only Rumsien speakers ever contacted by Euro-American historians.	Grave marker of the Soberanes family, who lent their name to a point that now lies within Garrapata State Park.

This tree, on the grounds of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, has been turned into a food-storage locker by woodpeckers.

Felton and the RailRoads	Seaside
Scotts Valley	Monterey
Santa Cruz	Carmel
Soquel	Point Lobos
Aptos	Big Sur Country
A Day With Poet Ric Masten


Sandy Lydon cozies up to an old pal: Father Junipero Serra.	Statue of Father Junipero Serra at the Presidio of Monterey. The statue was commissioned by Jane Stanford over 100 years ago. Recently, its fingers have been knocked off, probably by people who oppose the canonization of Father Serra.


Grave marker of George Kodani, with his picture.	Grave marker of George Kodani, reverse showing inscription.
George Kodani was Gennosuke's son, named for Gennosuke's younger brother. Uncle George did not bring honor to the family. But his namesake nephew was such a remarkable person that his High School class was moved to make a public expression of sympathy. At a time when anti-Japanese sentiment was running through the region, it was a remarkable community that could do such a thing.


This tree, on the grounds of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, has been turned into a food-storage locker by woodpeckers.	A Piece of the Great Oak of Monterey, under which Father Serra said the first Catholic mass in Monterey.