Chinese Settlers

Chinese settlers first arrived in Monterey County in 1851 when a junk that sailed 7,000 miles from southern China drifted into a cove at Point Lobos. Four or five families aboard built wooden houses on the west shore of the cove, one of which still stands and is used as "The Whalers Cabin" museum. The Chinese immigrants fished and harvested abalone for years before some moved to Stillwater Cove in Pebble Beach in 1868 to live on land leased from David Jacks, and some moved to Point Alones in Pacific Grove to help establish a larger fishing village. The village, at a site now filled by Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, thrived for more than three decades as the Chinese fishermen caught tons of squid and dried it for export. It burned to the ground in 1906, in a fire many believe was deliberately set by hostile neighbors.