Photo: Rhododendrites (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk along Monterey's old cannery waterfront, on the Recreation Trail and Cannery Row. It starts at the Coast Guard pier, where the story of the sardine is told, from the first cannery on Ocean View Avenue in 1908 to the wartime boom and the collapse after the Second World War, and passes San Carlos Beach and the bronze of Ed Ricketts where he died in 1948. At McAbee Beach, Portuguese whalers once boiled blubber and Chinese families settled after the China Point fire of 1906; Steinbeck Plaza follows. On the Row come the Monterey Canning Company's crossover bridge and Pacific Biological Laboratories, the lab Ricketts rebuilt in 1937 and the model for Doc's in Steinbeck's novel. The walk ends with the Wing Chong market, three one-room workers' shacks, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the former Hovden Cannery, and the plaque marking the Chinese fishing village that stood from the 1850s until the fire of 1906.
11 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 60 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 7 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Coast Guard pier, San Carlos Beach, Edward Ricketts Memorial, McAbee Beach, Steinbeck Plaza.
Monterey Canning Company building, Pacific Biological Laboratories.
Wing Chong market building, Historic Worker's Shacks, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Site of the Chinese fishing village.
The breakwater where the sardine story begins, from the first cannery of 1908 to the collapse of the catch after the Second World War.
Where Portuguese whalers boiled blubber and Chinese families made a new village after the 1906 fire, with old cannery pillars.
A 1917 to 1918 cannery whose original warehouse and crossover bridge still span the Row, once carrying cans to be boxed.
Ed Ricketts' specimen lab, rebuilt in 1937 after a cannery fire, a gathering place for writers and scientists, and Doc's lab in fiction.
Three one-room cabins where up to four cannery workers lived in season, shown as Japanese, Filipino and Spanish households.
The shoreline where Chinese fishing families lived from the 1850s until a fire, never explained, destroyed the village in 1906.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 11 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 11 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Monterey — Cannery Row and Steinbeck's Waterfront, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
11 narration points, including Coast Guard pier, San Carlos Beach, Edward Ricketts Memorial, McAbee Beach and Steinbeck Plaza. That is about 16 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 11 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.