Fisherman's Wharf history

In 1845, Thomas Larkin constructed a wharf at Monterey for regular passenger and freight service, with ships arriving four times weekly.

By the early 1850’s, there were about 600 Chinese fishermen fishing with flat bottomed boats in the Monterey Bay.

The wharf was completed in 1853 to serve the lumber trade, but that did not save Meiggs from being chased to South America by his creditors.

Meiggs died in Peru in 1877, not long before the cable cars started clanking down to the great wharf he envisioned.

They started abalone canning and sardine and salmon fishing operations, too. It was a Japanese man who first free dived for abalone beginning in the mid-1890's.

By 1900, the Portuguese whalers turned to fishing and farming.

The Fisherman’s Wharf of today rests on land created from the rubble of buildings destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906.

In 1907, a German restaurateur, Chef “Pop” Ernest Doelter, opened a restaurant on Alvarado Street.

During salmon season in 1909, there were an estimated 185 salmon boats fishing the Monterey Bay, and 145 were Japanese-owned.

By 1916, the City of Monterey had purchased the Wharf and immediately began to expand the Wharf, providing more services to the fishing fleet and to the freight business.

In 1919, he moved his restaurant to the head of Old Fisherman’s Wharf.

Once the largest canning operation in the world, it shipped with the Del Monte label until the 1920s.

In 1925, City of Monterey officials started a drive for the construction of a new cargo Wharf to meet increasing commercial fishing demands and to relieve congestion on Fisherman's Wharf.

Bonds were voted in and a new Wharf (Municipal Wharf II) was completed in 1926.

By the 1940's, nineteen fully operating canneries harvested over 250,000 tons of sardines per season.

In 1957, construction of a new marina was placed on the ballot, but divided Monterey citizens failed to approve the project until a 20-year, low-interest loan for half the construction cost was obtained from the State.

The Monterey Municipal Marina was dedicated on September 11, 1960.

In 1963, Manchurian immigrant Leonid Matveyeff, who changed his name to Leonard Martin, turned the cannery into a shopping center.

In 1996, a $5,000,000 Marina reconstruction project was finished, and new, wider concrete docks and a handicapped accessible ramp were added.