Cannery Row

Monterey's Cannery Row is a busy center of tourism, but the area's history starts with indigenous people. Its association with fishing came from immigrant populations, and its reputation as a cannery exploded as that business was imploding.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. And a
little bit of business before we get into today's episode. Uh.

(00:21):
We normally, in the course of any given year would
probably tour a little bit hell little maybe some live shows,
maybe someone off live shows that were asked to go
to places and do them, or we would have our
own tour. Uh. And one of the best parts about
those for us is getting to do Q and A
with the audience, and we really miss it, so uh,

(00:42):
we thought it might be a good thing to do
our own little Q and A that is a non
touring version in which you are listeners can send us
questions uh and then we will pull as many as
we can and make an episode out of us answering
those questions. So, if you would like to submit a
question for a Q and A episode, you need to

(01:03):
do that by June twelve. Uh. And you can do
that by sending it to History Podcast at I heart
radio dot com and that way we will get it
and hopefully read it and then answer it in the
It could be your burning questions about previous episodes, how

(01:23):
we record something totally unrelated that you've either thought about
or wondered about, or you know, you can ask us
questions about ourselves. Depending on how personal they get, we
may or may not include them, but please do send
those to us. Again. That is History Podcast at iHeart
radio dot com and we need them by June twelve,

(01:44):
so we can't wait to hear from you. Now on
to today's episode. Uh. John Steinbeck published a novel it
became very popular called Cannary Row, which is kind of
a slice of life look at a small community in Monterey, California,
And Stiby had actually been born in nearby Selina's and
then lived in Monterey for more than a decade from

(02:04):
nineteen thirty nine with his first wife, And that novel
is really a very loving look at the place and
the people who lived there. And he wrote it though
after he had moved away. But Canary Row is of
course a real place, although it was not called that
until after the novel was written. It was just Ocean
View Avenue. Before that it was just wagon tracks, and
before that it was occupied by indigenous peoples and did

(02:27):
not have roads. Uh, they'll probably paths today. Canary Row
is a really busy tourism center. If you have ever
been there, you know what I'm talking about. But I
thought it would be interesting to look at some of
its history, from before it was home to any white settlers,
through the heyday of its time as a fishing and
canning center, and then how it evolved to be the
place it is today. So true story on the genesis

(02:50):
or this episode. I have been really, really quite comfortable
and content being home all the time through this pandemic isolation.
I feel like I'm one of the luck elands that
I It has not troubled me. I mean, the pandemic
itself is stressful, but in terms of just having to
stay in my home for a couple of months, that
has not been a problem at all. But I'm missing

(03:10):
travel a little bit. It started to express itself to
me by just having dreams about trips I have been on.
They're not fantastical, They're literally like watching movies of trips
out down UH. And one of them UH is a
trip that I have been waxing a little rhapsodic about,
which was a day last year that I just spent
driving out too and hanging out in Monterey with one

(03:32):
of my dearest friends. Uh So, I thought this would
be a nice way to revisit that. And I hope
that we can all go wherever it hurts desire soon
and all of us with travel bugs or anyone who
is getting a little tired of being in the house
will soon be past that. So I very similarly have
been simultaneously feeling very lucky and missing getting out and

(03:55):
doing some stuff. So a lot of sources that look
at the history of Canary Row start with the settlement
of a Chinese fishing village in the eighteen fifties. Obviously
that's an important part of the story, but it also
leaves out a really significant precursor to that, which is
the Alonei people. The Alonei had lived along what is

(04:15):
now the California coast from Big Sur north to San Francisco.
For context, Monterey is about thirty miles north of Big Sur,
and the alone were not all grouped together under one
umbrella for a long time. In the mid seventeen hundreds,
when they become part of the record for European settlers,
there were approximately ten thousand Alonei people living on the coast,

(04:36):
spread across forty to fifty different tribal communities. The languages
among these communities and tribes, which you will sometimes see
called tribe let's varied, and again they did not consider
themselves one people, although it's certainly possible they may have
stemmed from the same group at one point thousands of
years back, and they mixed socially, including intermarrying among the

(04:56):
various groups. The subgroup that is most closely linked to
the immediate Monterey area was the rooms or rooms in
which will also see it spelled as uh. They were
most local to the area we're talking about today. The
Oloni lived through hunting and gathering with their own art
and culture in the Bay area for more than ten
thousand years up until the arrival of Europeans that we

(05:18):
mentioned just a moment ago. As early as sixteen o two,
the people native to the region probably had some kind
of contact with Spanish explorers. That was the year that
Sebastian de Visa kind of visited the Bay area looking
for a place to harbor ships. Spanish explorers Don Gaspar
de Portola and father Juan Crespy were some of the

(05:39):
first to visit the area with the intent of actually
staying there. But that didn't happen until much later in
the late seventeen sixties. Accounts written by the Spanish in
those early years mentioned the numerous established villages of the
Alone who, although they referred to them as costano initially
literally just meaning coastal people um, that evolved into coast

(06:02):
to ohen. Yeah, you will still see sometimes in older
scholarly articles the Alonei referred to as coast and Owen's
and the Spanish did indeed set up mission settlements as planned.
There were seven built between the years of seventeen seventy
and sevente Dolores, San Carlos, Solidad, San Juan Bautista, Santa Cruz,

(06:23):
Santa Clara, and San Jose. And as the missions moved in,
the Alonei worked with the settlers. Often they would move
their huts closer to the nearest mission, and they started
integrating into those mission communities as they were evangelized to
leave their tribal ways behind and convert to Christianity. This
proved disastrous. By eighteen fifty, the Alone population was deeply depleted,

(06:47):
diseases contracted from the European settlers, high infant mortality rates
and genocide. Under the guise of protecting white settlers had
claimed the lives of most of the indigenous peoples of
the coast. There are contemporary organizations that have established groups
of Alonei descendants and traced back through those mission records.
They've regained some of their tribal culture, including reviving some

(07:10):
of those languages that had been spoken by the tribelets
that are now grouped under the colony umbrella. Additionally, there
are efforts being made to get federal recognition from the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and an ongoing effort in California
to have an Alonei cultural center established on land that
was taken from them previously. So when Chinese immigrants settled

(07:34):
in the area just as California was beginning its statehood,
there was not much left of the Alonei to document.
And while the Chinese settlers in the Bay Area and
specifically Monterey were essential in establishing what would become the
area's identity, their origins there are less than spectacularly documented.
For one, there's a lack of clarity about where specifically

(07:56):
they first started living and fishing. The first camp might
have been in a place that was a few miles
south of the now famous waterfront strip of Canary Row
at Point Lobos and on Carmel Bay. Coming from a
fishing culture, these settlers from Asia are believed to have
quickly realized just how ample their potential take was there

(08:17):
on the Pacific coast of North America, and to have
quickly set up additional camps at Pescadero and Point Alones.
If you look up Point Alone is on a modern map,
you'll see it's right there in the mixt of the
tourist district that has grown around Canary Row. Yeah, that
really is kind of a central point of all of this.
And by the mid eighteen fifties, so just a few

(08:39):
years after they started fishing, their hundreds of Chinese fishermen
were turning the area into a commercial fishing enterprise. Initially
they would dive and gather abalone, and then they moved
on to other catches and different fishing when competition from
other fishermen, who realized that these Chinese fishermen were really
onto something potentially um fiscally beneficial, kind of made it

(09:04):
a little more difficult for the Chinese to continue to
do so, so they started fishing for yellowtail, flounder, cod
and sardines. Among others. In the next fifty years, fishing
would become a massive industry as these settlements grew into
villages and ultimately into larger and more established communities that

(09:24):
were part of the growing Monterey area. In the early
nineteen hundreds, daily catches ranging from an estimated two hundred
to eight hundred pounds were coming into Monterey through the
Chinese fisheries, and some of the fish was dried and
then sent back to China. I read one thing that
this was kind of a trick about salt import that
they would dry the fish, packet and salt and send

(09:45):
it back and they could get around some of the
taxation of salt that was moving uh. And then the
junks that would arrive in Monterey Bay would offload goods
for importers there and those would eventually move to San Francisco,
and then they would reload with all of this dried
fish to take at home, and some of the fish
was also sold to markets in San Francisco. The main
fishing village that developed eventually became known as China Point.

(10:08):
That's kind of centered around the Point Alones area, and
it was running a busy and successful business. But of
course that level of success from an immigrant community led
to conflict with other groups because of racism. We've talked
so many times about laws that were explicitly anti Chinese
in the nineteenth century, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, which

(10:29):
forbid immigration from China. But even for people who were
living entirely with the law and who had contributed to
the economic success of the area, there was still plenty
of racism to deal with. Things were relatively peaceful for
most of the eighteen hundreds, but in the early nineteen hundreds,
the Chinese population in Monterey, many of whom had had
been born in California at that point and where US citizens,

(10:52):
faced growing adversity when it came to their neighbors. And
we're going to get into the complaints that started about
the Chinese Fish village after we first take a break
and hear from our sponsors in nineteen o four, complaints

(11:14):
about the smell of Point Alnis and it's drying fish
escalated rapidly. That land that the Chinese fishing village was
on was leased to the village by the Pacific Improvement Company.
We're going to come back to this entity in a bit,
and the white community started pressuring the leaseholder to evict
the Chinese fisherman over this issue of the smell. A
notice was issued by the landlord that all leases would

(11:36):
be canceled, and leaders from the fishing village then approached
the Pacific Improvement Company and they wanted to negotiate and
find a mutually beneficial solution, and this started to take
shape as a search for another location within the p
i c s property holdings that would meet the needs
of the fishermen. But as this potential move was being

(11:56):
worked out, another event that we've talked about before on
the show took place, and that was the San Francisco
earthquake and fires of April six. We mentioned in that
episode that some of San Francisco's Chinatown residents moved to
other Chinese communities as refugees, and this was the case
on Monterey. About a hundred and fifty people moved into

(12:17):
the village at Point Alans and for about a month,
the landlord backed off of this whole eviction plan. Discussion
resumed in May, this time of a possible move to
attractive land at Point Pinos. Yeah. To be clear, I
don't think they were like, oh, we're in dire times.
Will be nice. They were busy with their own property
damage when they kind of stopped pestering them about eviction.

(12:39):
But then as these negotiations that restarted, uh, we're kind
of moving along. But they did not get very far
because a fire started in a barn that was part
of the Chinese fishing village, and that fire ultimately consumed
most of the buildings surrounding it and basically the majority
of the village. Whether or not this was a case
of parson remains unknown. Ah, you can still find discussion

(13:04):
of it. Uh, but everybody who pretty agrees will never
know the truth. White spectators watched this blaze as the
village's residents ran in and out, trying to save everything
they could, but a lot of times things that were
saved were then looted as soon as the owner ran
back to try to rescue more of their belongings. There

(13:25):
are accounts that some of the spectators openly cheered as
they watched. Only a few buildings were left standing afterward.
So if you heard that episode on the nineteen o
six fires in San Francisco, you may recall that many
of the residents of San Francisco's Chinatown refused to leave
even though the city was hoping that would be an
excuse to push them out, and ultimately they rebuilt. A

(13:47):
similar thing took place in Monterey after the fire. There,
while only a few buildings were left, those same leaders
who had begun negotiating with their landlord let a movement
of people who refused to be pushed out of a
community that they had built. They staged a sit in
which led to a negotiation of a new lease, this
time at mccabee Beach, just south of Point Alonus. While

(14:10):
some of the village community stayed and tried to make
a go of it in their new location, most dispersed
to other areas, and ultimately, once squid drying was banned
inside city limits, the Macabi site was abandoned as well. Yeah,
for clarity, if you know the area, um, this is
not These two places are not far from each other,
like you can walk it in five to ten minutes.

(14:33):
It's all pretty close together, which is just kind of
geographically interesting to me. For three years in the early
two thousands, there was a large scale archaeological dig and
analysis that was conducted at Point Alone's and it turned
up some of the only material remains of the once
robust Chinese American fishing community there. In eighteen seventy four,

(14:54):
a group called the Patrons of Husbandry, which was a
farmer's coalition more commonly called the Rangers, built the region's
first steam powered railroad that ran from Salinas Valley to Monterrey.
The grangers entire point of existence was to fight monopolistic
grain transport, so in establishing a line that could take
the grain from Salina's two ships and Moterey, they were

(15:17):
trying to break this monopoly that had been held by
the Southern Pacific Railroad. Southern Pacific was costing the local
industry as much as two thousand dollars a year in
freight costs, and while this did force competition, which resulted
in Southern Pacific extending its own lines a little bit
further and lowering freight charges, it was ultimately not a

(15:37):
successful venture. Storms caused bridge collapses on the line several
different times in the first few years, and an engine
house burned down in eighteen seventy seven, and then a
bitter challenge over executive leadership that ended up becoming a
State Supreme Court case further destabilized the company. In fall

(15:57):
eighteen seventy nine, Southern Pacific bought the Monterey and Selina's
Valley Railroad, so it ended up in the end only
adding to Southern Pacific's monopoly in the area. But the
bigger impact, at least for Monterey, was that this suddenly
made the ocean side town completely accessible to additional large
scale business and also to tourism, and that meant an

(16:20):
entirely new revenue stream for the community. Charles Crocker, and
executive with the railroad, immediately saw the financial potential of
making Monterey a tourist destination, so, using Southern Pacific's power, influence,
and property, he had a hotel built with incredible speed
to accommodate what he believed would be a huge money maker.
That was the Hotel del Monte. Architect Arthur Brown, Sr.

(16:44):
Who worked for the railroad, designed the sprawling Victorian resort,
and it was a big, showy place. You can see
pictures of it. It's quite beautiful and while it was
sometimes called Crocker's folly during construction by disbelievers who thought
that no one would pay to visit a fishing town,
the hotel was in fact a massive success. Hotel del
Monte opened on June third, eighteen eighty, and within a

(17:07):
month it had turned a profit of eleven thousand, three
hundred dollars. In the first month and a half it
was open, more than three thousand booking requests had had
to be turned away because the luxury hotel just couldn't
accommodate all the people who wanted to visit. Yeah, they
had I think a little over a hundred rooms and
it was just like never ending calls. Can we book

(17:27):
as day? No? In fact no. Uh. The resort was
on a seven thousand acre parcel of land, and it
had its own botanical garden, as well as numerous other amenities.
In September eighteen eighty, President Rutherford Behayes stayed at the
Hotel Del Monte, and he praised his visit as quote
one of the most agreeable episodes of our lives. Because

(17:47):
of the reputation the hotel enjoyed immediately upon opening, it
was a huge draw for the growing leisure set. Among
its many draws was an outing along the quote eighteen
mile drive. This is a Unich loop around Pacific Grove
and the surrounding area that started and ended at the hotel.
Was a very carefully planned pleasure outing away to get

(18:09):
wealthy visitors into carriages and touring the area. The hope
was that seeing all of the coastline and the natural
beauty of the land would encourage them to invest in
Crocker's dream of a high end developed community. The name
was eventually amended to seventeen Mile Drive to more accurately
reflect the route after it had been altered. It does

(18:29):
still exist today, although some of it goes through gated communities,
and the hotel had a fire in seven that caused
significant damage, but it was rebuilt again very quickly in
the same style and it continued its prosperity. In Thomas
Edison Incorporated made a movie of several buggies of tourists
passing by the front of the hotel. You can find

(18:50):
that footage on the Library of Congress's site, and it
is quite sweet. It's very cute to watch them driving
by and waving and looking very very happy in front
of this Victorian driveway team. The property and eighteen thousand
acres of surrounding land were purchased by Samuel F. B.
Morse in partnership with a number of other investors. This
established the Del Monte Properties Company, which eventually became the

(19:13):
Pebble Beach Company. The hotel was renovated and updated, and
Morse developed the surrounding area as a sports and leisure complex,
including of course, golf courses. Yeah, there was already a
golf course, and then he added to that. And now,
of course Pebble Beach is known for its golf courses.
Uh In the sprawling Victorian hotel burned down and it

(19:34):
was rebuilt, but this time in Spanish revival style. When
Hotel del Monte reopened two years later, more than three
thousand people were on hand to celebrate. After Steinbeck's time
living in Monterey, the hotel was requisitioned by the Navy
as a school center to train people, and then the
Navy bought it in seven and today it serves as

(19:56):
the main building for the Navy's post graduate school. In
an opera rates under the name Herman Hall, we're about
to talk about the industry that gave the area its name,
but before we dig into that, let's take another quick
sponsor break. Of course, Cannary Row is named for cannaries,

(20:20):
but the Monterey area didn't actually see its first cannary
until nineteen o two. There's a lot of fishing going
on there, but not canning, and it wasn't even on
the stretch that first one that would become canary row.
Up to that point, the fishing industry had been dominated
by the Chinese fisherman who dried fish and shipped it away,
or as we said, sold it to markets in San Francisco.

(20:41):
But as competitors grew in number, the nature of Monterey's
fishing business changed. The first cannary was opened by a
man named Frank E. Booth. Booth had been doing business
in Monterey since the nineties. He was president of the
Sacramento River Packers Association. He would make the journey down
to Monterey and have salmon shipps to his packing facilities,

(21:02):
but he soon realized it would make a lot more
sense to just open the cannery right there in moderate
He tried twice, with mediocre results, to open canning facilities there,
first with a small packing shed that folded because he
had a hard time getting contracts with fisherman who already
had their own deals with San Francisco businesses. He made
another stab at a canary in nineteen o one, but

(21:23):
there was competition, this time in the form of a
small canary with a smoke house that had been opened
by a man named Hr. Robbins, and then in nineteen
o two Boost operation was destroyed by a fire. Robbins
was also struggling financially at this point, not from fire
but just from other issues, so Booth bought out Robbins
and expanded his smoking and canning operation considerably. That same year,

(21:46):
Japanese immigrant Otosa Borrow Noda also opened a cannery called
Montery Fishing and Canning Company. Noda had an American partner
in the cannery named Henry Malpas. But even before the cannery,
Noda had a keen insight about the potential for the area.
He had started working there as a lumberjack for the
Pacific Improvement Company, but he soon started a fishing colony

(22:09):
and Monterey with more than five dozen other Japanese men.
While they fished for abalone, their real focus was salmon. Yeah,
we had mentioned the Pacific Improvement Company before. They were
basically the correlated company that worked with the Southern Pacific
Railroad to handle property and construction and whatnot, So they
really were an incredibly powerful company within the Monterey area

(22:33):
prior to this. To UH, the Japanese focus on salmon fishing.
There had been a belief that salmon were fairly fished
out in Monterey Bay. The catch that people were able
to bring in of salmon had fallen off considerably, but
Noda and the Japanese fishermen used different techniques and fishing
gear evolved, and by the end of the first decade

(22:53):
of the twentieth century, there were a hundred and eighty
five salmon boats counted in Monterey Bay, and more than
three quarters of those were owned by Japanese fishermen who
were doing very well. So this is a lot of
salmon talk, which maybe a little puzzling if you know
that Cannary Row is famous for its sardines. But before
World War One, most of the salmon caught in Monterey

(23:14):
Bay was shipped to Europe, specifically Germany, and most of
the sardines that made it to tables in the Bay
area came from France. But the onset of war disrupted
all those shipping routes, of course, so things started to
shift for the businesses along Ocean View Avenue. There was
demand for sardines in the area, and during World War One,
the cannery business at Monterey Bay grew immensely. More than

(23:38):
half a dozen new canning facilities sprang up, and this
is a time when Sicilian fishermen really innovated and set
the stage for Ocean View Avenue to eventually become known
which did not happen until World War Two as the
sardine capital of the world. That name, we should mention
is not really accurate though, as many towns that name
themselves will do, they don't always really have the facts

(23:59):
behind them. No way is the winner there um. But
the Sicilian fisherman did bring a new way to catch
fish with them. They first used an open style boat
and net that they had brought from the Mediterranean and
used the fishing techniques from there, and then in the
late nineteen twenties, per sign ships were brought into the
area and that significantly increased to catch that fishermen were

(24:20):
able to bring in. This method involves a huge, huge
net that's deployed in a circle around a school of
fish with a circumference as big as a quarter mile.
The nets bottom is also very deep, as deep as
two ft, and after it's corralled all these fish into
one location, the net would be pulled in tight like
a draw string purse and then all the fish would

(24:42):
be trapped in there and all of its scooped just
right into a ship. This type of fishing is still
done today in some places, and it's pretty problematic. One,
it is an indiscriminate way to catch fish. Everything in
the area gets caught, regardless of whether it's the kind
of fish who are actually fishing or Two. It leads
to over fishing, which ultimately collapsed the industry as the

(25:06):
bay was depleted. Yeah, there are plenty of videos you
can watch that are very sad about per sign fishing today.
Just know if you want to see how it's done,
you have to very carefully navigate those waters online. But
the sardines from Monterey Bay are not the same as
the ones from the North Atlantic. They are much larger,

(25:27):
almost twice the size, and they have a higher oil content.
They actually had to be called a different thing to
be exported because they were not considered sardines by everybody.
Uh And a lot of them, a lot of them,
as many as two thirds at a time, were never
intended for food usage, but for a process called reduction,
That is a process where they are ground down and

(25:47):
made into fish meal. And fertilizer, and we're gonna come
back to reduction in just a moment, because it had
a significant impact on the life of Monterey and also
had some lasting implications. On September four, TEO, a terrible
fire started when lightning struck two oil tanks that were
owned by Associated Oil Company. This could have easily destroyed

(26:10):
all of Ocean View Avenue and its cannery industry, and
it nearly did. Several buildings and two canneries went up
in flames. Two soldiers from the Presidio died fighting the fire.
Thanks only to random luck of the wind changing direction,
the rest of Ocean View Avenue and the neighborhood were spared.

(26:31):
This was incidentally, less than two weeks before the fire
that destroyed the Hotel del Monti. Although the two fires
were unrelated. What a thing for a community, though, To
have like those two fires so close together. You have
to feel like you live on bad luck lean at
that point, I think. During the depression, which of course
deeply impacted the entire country significantly, the decision was made

(26:56):
that the industry in Monterey was going to prioritize reduction
rather than canning because it was making more money. Doing
that than selling sardines as edibles, and this meant that
the fishermen and the canary workers of Monterey were able
to make it through this difficult time for the most part,
which is great. But this was a short sighted solution
because the purse signed fishing was ramped up to keep

(27:19):
the Montere economy afloat, which meant the bay was very
much over fished, although it was not yet quite depleted.
But World Wars you saw a continuation of over fishing,
so this time because people needed the sardines for food,
there were heated debates about what was happening and warnings
that were issued by the science community, but business interest

(27:41):
one out and the fishing and the canning continued. There's
this bit of irony to the timing of Steinbeck's book
that made this area famous. So Cannary row made this
troop of ocean view something of a household name and
led to it actually being renamed Canary Row in. But
this was happening as the industry that led to that

(28:03):
nickname was completely caving in the last half of the
nineteen forties saw progressively weaker and weaker numbers in terms
of catch. It's kind of like a depressing I looked
at one table of like the poundage of catch they
were taking in every day, and as it depletes, it's
just a completely depressing line. Uh. And there were some

(28:23):
canaries that had this idea that they could like keep
it going a little bit by having fish shipped into
their facilities that they would then can and ship back out.
But that was not a long term solution, and over
time Cannery Rowe sort of became a ghost town as
one business after another went under and it left all
of these cannaries and warehouses just empty. The late nineteen

(28:44):
fifties and early nineteen sixties brought yet another wave of change. Slowly,
daring restaurant tours moved into the area, hoping to draw
tourists to the ocean side, and it started the tourism
rebuild of Canary Row. The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in
nine four, and it's footprint covered the site of the
former Hofden Cannery as well as the Chinese fishing village

(29:07):
that started the fishing industry in Monterey. Over time, the
remaining warehouses have been repurposed and renovated, filled with things
like shops and restaurants and art galleries. Today when you go,
it's kind of like, um, what you would expect in
a really charming seaside tourist town. Like the aquarium is
a huge draw, of course, and it's a really really

(29:28):
fantastic facility, but then it is it's like a lot
of you know, shops and the kind of like cute
stuff you would find in a seaside town. Um. That
beach where they initially moved the Chinese fishing village has
a little memorial wall there with a carving of fisherman
on it, but there's nothing else there. People like launched
their kayaks and stuff out of there. It's just a

(29:51):
really lovely place to visit. But it's one of those
places where if you really look around, a lot of
the buildings still have like old labels on them, and
you can re a lies like that. This is rebuilt
into something that had gone almost dormant for a while,
which is kind of a fascinating aspect of it. Um.
I love Monterey and clearly need to go back as
quickly as possible, um because it's a really beautiful place

(30:16):
and you can go do fun things at the aquarium.
Last time I went, I accidentally stumble into with my
dear friend a night where they were doing a like
an after hours event at the aquarium where they had
all this amazing like ticket tasting food where you would
like spend twenty dollars and get five tickets and then
you could go around from table to table and try
interesting little Oh I was heaven. I was like, we

(30:37):
stumbled into the best night of our lives. Uh So
that was fabulous, Thank you Monterey Bay Aquarium. Also, they're
doing a lot about conservation and sustainable seafood, which is
always important. Yeah, it's I was just thinking, as as
I have no idea if there is a correlation between
the Monterey Bay Aquariums focused on sustainable seafood and the

(30:58):
history of Monterey. Yes, you know the answer. I like
how I was just sort of sitting here, like I
wonder if that's related. Not a mistake. Um, I mean
they're very aware that, uh you know, they're they're in
effect because over fishing really just bottomed out that that

(31:19):
entire industry there. Um. Yeah, we should point out that
the aquariums position does not cover the entirety of where
that Chinese fishing village once stood. The main location of
that village is now the site of the Stanford Hopkins
Marine Station and it there are different, um sort of
like factoids and studies you can read about fish coming

(31:43):
back and what that is. But they are also some
that are like it's never recovered and it will never recover.
There was just too too much depletion for any of
those like fish communities to really really regain um, any
kind of like permanent in that area. UM. Anyway, that's

(32:04):
Canary Row and Monterey, which I love. If you get
a chance and you have not been highly recommend it,
it's awfully fun. It's also just a beautiful drive. If
you're in San Francisco for a trip for vacation and
you want to drive out to Monterey, it's a really
pretty drive. I'm clearly a big fan. Yeah. I have
two pieces of listener mail. One sort of involves see life. Um.

(32:29):
It mostly just made me chuckle. It's from our listener Ariel,
and she said, I've really been enjoying your podcast in
the last year or show. I greatly appreciate the number
of episodes about cool women and minorities I am disappointed
to have not learned about before. I wanted the email
to tell you about two things in an online trivia game,
we were asked about the Anglosans of our war and
how many hours it lasted. I knew the answer was

(32:51):
less than one hour because of your podcast, and was
filled with a great sense of probably undeserved pride. It's
weirdly fulfilling to know the answer to a random trivia question.
Yes it is, uh too. I enjoyed the recent episode
about Catherine the Great, and I thought you would enjoy
a picture by Katherine Miller art of Queen Catherine the
Great White Shark. She uses animal puns to create gorgeous
and fun art. It is an absolutely marvelous piece of work.

(33:15):
It makes me chuckle and it's just beautifully done. Uh
Now I want to go explore Katherine Miller's available prince
and get myself into all kinds of trouble. Thank you
so much, Ariel for introducing me to a new problem
in a good way. Our Our second piece of listener
mail today is from our listener Anne Marie. Uh. This
is another one that touches on our emergency medicine to

(33:37):
Parter and she says, Hi, ladies, I work at in
of the Alexandria Hospital and there is a big history
section in the visitor entrance to the hospital. Because we've
been around for so long since eighteen seventy two, there
is a lot of interesting history to share, so I
thought I would send a few photos I took. Please
let me know if any of these don't show up properly. So, um,
there's like some beautiful stained glass that memorializes the founding

(33:58):
of it. And what was really really interesting is that
it there is discussion of the Alexandria Plan, which was
that initial plan to develop permanent emergency room doctor programs
rather than just having people rotate in from other UH
divisions of the hospital to cover emergency care, which is
pretty cool. So she works in a place that completely

(34:21):
changed the way we look at medicine today, which is amazing.
So thank you, thank you, thank you. If you would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also
find us on social media as Missed in History, and
we would love it if you had subscribe to the podcast.
You can do that on the I Heart Radio app,
at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you listen. Stuff

(34:46):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.