John Steinbeck

Monterey’s old Ocean View Avenue was the real neighborhood behind John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, where actual people and businesses inspired the fictional characters and establishments in his 1945 novel. The book captured life during the cannery era of the 1930s and 1940s. Steinbeck’s longtime friend, biologist Ed Ricketts, became the model for Doc in Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday, and Doc’s Western Biological Laboratory was based on Ricketts’s Pacific Biological Laboratories, located today at 800 Cannery Row. The Wing Chong Market at 835 Cannery Row, owned by Chinese entrepreneur Won Yee, became the grocer Lee Chong in the novel. The La Ida Cafe at 851 Cannery Row was actually a brothel during the cannery days, as was the Bear Flag Restaurant, operated by Flora Woods, whom Steinbeck named Dora Flood. The old Bear Flag site is now Mackerel Jack’s Trading Company at 799 Cannery Row. In 1958, long after the novel’s publication, the city of Monterey renamed Ocean View Avenue after Cannery Row, permanently linking the street with John Steinbeck, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author.

Monterey, California · United States