Fish Culture

The fish in Monterey Bay brought diversity to the land as well. Rumsen Indians had a fishing village for centuries at what is now Custom House Plaza. Portuguese whalers arrived in the 1850s, about the time Chinese fishermen landed at Point Lobos. Fresh fish markets were limited until the railroad arrived in 1874, then Italian fishermen moved to Monterey with larger boats to catch fish for San Francisco buyers, according to Tim Thomas, historian at the Monterey Maritime and History Museum. With growing competition, discriminatory laws were passed to limit Chinese fishing, so the “Chinatown” then in Pacific Grove turned to squid that nobody else wanted. Japanese divers arrived in 1895, settled on Cannery Row and started harvesting the abalone no one else valued. Monterey started focusing on sardines soon after that and Sicilian fishermen with large purse seiners moved in to catch tons of them for the 41 Cannery Row processing plants that were booming into the 1940s. Japanese fishermen dominated salmon fishing by then and owned 80% of the businesses on Fisherman’s Wharf until World War II erupted and they were forced to move to inland camps.

Photo: Monterey Wharf and waterfront. Ca. 1907. Credit: Monterey Public Library, California History Room

The Other Half of Point Lobos

Landscape painter Francis McComas called Point Lobos "the greatest meeting of land and water in the world" a century ago, a claim frequently stolen but rarely disputed. Point Lobos is also half of a whole, with a mirror image 100 miles north. Point Reyes, a scenic formation north of San Francisco, is believed by geologists to have been attached to Point Lobos a few million years ago, broken off and moved north by the Palo Colorado-San Gregorio Fault Zone. The eastern shoreline of Point Reyes fits like a puzzle with the jagged, western shoreline of Point Lobos, both in geological analysis and aerial photos. They have identical layers of rocks and sediments, a unique pattern found nowhere else, according to H. Gary Greene, a renowned researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, Moss Landing Marine Lab and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The geology shows the two points were formed together by volcanoes, glaciers, floods and ocean floor lifts.

(Photo: Point Reyes courtesy of Patrick Smith)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson nearly died in Carmel Valley in 1879, but maybe, in a funny way, the incident was the best thing to ever happen to him. While here on a visit, the 28-year-old Scottish author set off alone on a horse, but he collapsed miles from anywhere, surviving for three days by drinking coffee. He barely pulled through. (He was weakened by lifelong tuberculosis.) Stevenson subsequently wrote several classics including "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped." Could it be that his creative juices were somehow jarred loose by his close encounter with death? (Incidentally, "Treasure Island" contains passages probably inspired by Point Lobos.)
(Portrait by Girolamo Nerli, 1892)

The Greatest Meeting of Land and Water

(Photo: Whalers Cove in Point Lobos state reserve. Permission
is granted to copy and distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.)

Point Lobos is the "greatest meeting of land and water in the world." Many sources credit this quote to Robert Louis Stevenson. (For example, United Airlines magazine in January, 1996.) In fact, the statement was made by Francis McComas (1875-1938), who came here from Australia to paint. Sports Illustrated, in June, 1999, claimed that Stevenson described Carmel Bay as "the mostfelicitous meeting of land and sea in creation." But Stevenson didn't say that one either, according to Roger G. Swearingen, an expert on the Scottish author, based in Santa Rosa. "The Sports Illustrated quote sounds to me like somebody's embellishment of the McComas comment," says Swearingen. So, McComas gets full credit for a memorable remark.

(Video: Underwater video of Point Lobos)