Quick answer
Cannery Row is the historic waterfront street in Monterey made famous by John Steinbeck's 1945 novel, set in its sardine canning heyday. At its peak in the early 1940s more than 30 canneries lined the street; the last one, the Hovden Cannery, closed in 1973 and is now the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Full transcript
The Street With a Thousand Whistles
Monterey began canning sardines in 1902, and within two decades the shoreline was a solid row of factories, each with its own whistle to call the workers. By the early nineteen forties more than thirty canneries lined the street, and the neighborhood had already been nicknamed Cannery Row for years. In 1945 John Steinbeck published a novel named for the street and made it famous forever; in 1958 the city made it official, renaming Ocean View Avenue to match the book.
The Fish That Went Away
Then the fish stopped coming. In 1946 the fleet landed 142,282 tons of sardines; the next year the catch was 26,818 tons. Canneries closed one after another — at the peak the plants had employed three to four thousand people, nearly half of Monterey's population. Hovden, the last cannery, hung on until 1973 by canning squid. Its old building is now the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which opened in 1984 on the same spot where the boilers once cooked the day's catch.
What to Do
Walk the row from the aquarium end back toward the harbor and read the buildings — the old brick and the iron rails set in the pavement are the real museum. The Pacific Biological Laboratories building, where the marine biologist Ed Ricketts worked, still stands; he was the model for Doc in the novel. Then go inside the aquarium, where the old Hovden boiler house is preserved inside a building full of living fish. Stand in front of that boiler and picture the street in 1946, when the season's catch topped 142,282 tons.