Monterey highlight
Historic Cannery Row
A historic waterfront district that was the center of California's sardine canning industry from 1902 until the last cannery closed in 1973.
Cannery Row, Monterey's waterfront street originally called Ocean View Avenue, became the center of California's sardine canning industry when Frank E. Booth established the first operations in 1902. The industry grew rapidly during World War I when canned fish was in high demand, and the district reached its height in the early 1940s with more than 30 canneries and reduction plants operating simultaneously along the same stretch of water.
After World War II, the sardine population collapsed and the canneries closed one by one, with the last closing in 1973. Today the historic structures that once housed industrial operations have been transformed into restaurants, shops, galleries and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which opened in 1984 on the site of the former Hovden Cannery. The district remains a significant cultural landmark, immortalized by John Steinbeck's 1945 novel of the same name.
Many of the people who spend time on Cannery Row now—visitors, workers, residents—are thinking about the future the way families do: a mortgage to maintain, educations to provide, a retirement to reach. A term policy sized to cover those years of financial obligation is the practical version of that plan.