Cannery Row

Steinbeck called it "a poem, a stink, a grating noise" — and he wasn't wrong. Ocean View Avenue became the sardine capital of the world, with more than 30 canneries and reduction plants lining the waterfront at peak production in the early 1940s. The sardines collapsed after the war. The city renamed the street Cannery Row in 1958, honoring both the novel and the industry it outlasted. Several original industrial structures survive, including part of the Hovden Cannery, which later became the site of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.