California’s Monterey Peninsula
Spanish discoverer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovered this peninsula as early as 1542. However, the sea was too rough for him to land. So another sixty years went by before Sebastián Vizcaíno was able to name the region after the viceroy of Mexico, the Count of Monte Rey. And it was to be another 150 years before Franciscan monks finally came to settle on the Monterey peninsula in 1770.
Subsequently, the city of Monterey rapidly grew to become a whaling center, and later involved in sardine fishing. In his classic novel Cannery Row, author John Steinbeck described how bad the conditions must have been in the harbor district pervaded by the foul stench. Tourism, however, very soon came to replace the fishing industry. In 1880, the first large hotels and beach houses opened and attracted vacationers from nearby San Francisco. Today, visitors from around the world are attracted by the city’s fantastic Monterey Bay Aquarium (http://www.mbayaq.org), housing the world’s largest artificial underwater habitat, and by several golf courses set in dream-like surroundings.
