Monterey

Monterey was the capital of Alta California under both Spanish and Mexican governance and retains more Spanish Colonial architecture than any other city in California the Custom House, Colton Hall, and the Stevenson House are all original 18th and 19th-century structures. The sardine canneries that made Cannery Row an industrial district by 1920 collapsed when the sardine population crashed in the late 1940s; Steinbeck documented the cannery workers' lives in his 1945 novel before the collapse. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which opened in 1984 in one of the original cannery buildings, became an instant world-class institution through its pioneering use of open-ocean exhibits and its ongoing marine research. The aquarium's kelp forest exhibit a three-story tank with natural lighting and no artificial substrate remains one of the most technically ambitious aquarium installations in existence. The Monterey Bay itself is the largest Marine Protected Area on the West Coast, with submarine canyons that funnel nutrient-rich deep water to the surface and support one of the richest coastal marine ecosystems in the Pacific. The Seventeen-Mile Drive through Pebble Beach and Cypress Point is a private toll road with stops at the Lone Cypress, Seal Rock, Ghost Tree, and Fanshell Beach.