Cannery Row: Enterprise Packing Company

"Cannery Row" watercolor, by Art Riley, c. 1950s. [CalArt]

The South Cannery Row district was composed primarily of newer canneries that were opened due to the demand caused by World War II. One of the first of these late canneries was the Enterprise Packing Company, founded by Sebastian J. "Buster" Sollecito in 1945. Very little is known of this canning operation except that it did not remain in business for long. Built near the corner of Ocean View Avenue and Reeside Avenue, the facility consisted of a cannery on the bay-side connected by a second-floor conveyor to a warehouse along the Southern Pacific Railroad's Monterey Branch tracks. The warehouse for this cannery was rather large and modern compared to many of its neighbors, being three stories in height with a large open wood facade in the center of the structure. Despite its short use, the cannery was able to arrange for a short, south-bound-exiting railroad spur behind its warehouse. Indeed, the back of the structure was built slightly at an angle to facilitate this spur, meaning the tracking was planned before construction began on the warehouse. It does not appear that there was a freight platform behind the warehouse, but if there was, all evidence of it has been erased. A third-story cargo-loading door, however, can still be seen from the former right-of-way.

Sardine can packaging label from Enterprise Packers, c. 1946.

Fire fighters working to extinguish the Enterprise Cannery fire, June 17, 1967. [Monterey Fire Department]

Enterprise Cannery burning down on the night of
June 17, 1967. [Monterey Fire Department]

Within two years of construction, Enterprise was flanked by two newer canneries, the Ronada Fisheries and Magnolia Packing Company to the north, and the California Fisheries Company to the south. This unfortunate arrangement lead to the cannery's eventual ruin. Soon after World War II ended, the sardine industry in Monterey dried up and Sollecito cut his losses, living a long retirement until his death in 2006. His company's buildings were rezoned for commercial uses. The warehouse became a three-story office building with retail space on the first floor. Over the years, it was remodeled and upgraded, but it still remains on the site today. The fate of the cannery building itself was that of most of the vacant buildings on the row: on June 17, 1967, a mysterious fire consumed the building, leveling it to the ground. Three firefighters were injured when the conveyor collapsed in the inferno.

Street Address, Geo-Coordinates & Current Status:
225-242 Cannery Row
36.611˚N, 121.897˚ W

The warehouse for the Enterprise Cannery remains at the original site today, although it now has a stucco facade atop its original concrete exterior. The wood-paneled offices, however, remain visible and accessible from the street. The only retail business in the building is BreakWater Scuba with some offices used on the upper floors. Three sides of the building are accessible, with the rear a stop along the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail and a marine mural painted on the eastern facade. The site of the cannery is now occupied by the Monterey Bay Inn, which was erected on the vacant site in the early 1990s. None of the original cannery structure survives.

Citations & Credits:

• Architectural Resources Group and Architects, Planners & Conservators, Inc. "San Carlos Park". Primary Record. State of California – The Resources Agency. Department of Parks and Recreation. In Final Cannery Row Cultural Resources Survey Report Document, Monterey, CA, 2001.
• Ventimiglia, Mike. Images of America: Monterey Fire Department. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

Cannery Row: Hovden Food Products Corporation

Knut Hovden [Italians
of the Monterey Peninsula]

One of the oldest, largest, well-known, and best-preserved canneries along Monterey's Cannery Row is and remains the Hovden Food Products Corporation. Knut Hovden was an educated Norwegian fisherman who held a degree in fisheries engineering and, alongside Frank E. Booth, was the first to mechanise the canning process in Monterey from 1904. He and Booth were also the first to hire Sicilian fishermen and bring them to Monterey, and it was one of those new hires, Pietro Ferrante, who introduced the Lampara net, which made catching sardines a highly profitable business. By 1917, this net was being used by almost all the fishing boats in the area. Hovden worked with Booth for many years but decided to break away from his partner in 1916, purchasing from Booth the property of Cannery Row's first cannery, the H.R. Robbins cannery, in order to start his own venture.

Hovden Cannery during its hayday, c. 1930s. [Fine Art America]

Portola Brand Sardines can label.

Construction on Hovden's new cannery began in 1916 at the northern end of Ocean View Avenue at its intersection with David Avenue. The original structure at the site survived and thrived through the end of World War I but then largely burned down in 1921, marking the first significant cannery fire on Cannery Row. Hovden experienced a second fire on October 6, 1924, that levelled his new and innovative reduction plant, setting a trend for such fires. But Hovden moved on, erecting the largest canning factory in Monterey. Hovden began specialising in stylised canned sardines, setting him apart from his more average rivals. His canned goods became known as "America's finest sea foods". The company's most famous brands were Portola, Prefet, Hovden, Best Ever, Cresta Blanca, and Cordova. His three story monster of a factory employed over 400 workers in its final years, many of them women. Hovden was also the first on the Row to erect a reduction plant, wherein he aggregated fish byproducts into fishmeal that could be used as fertilizer and livestock feed. Hovden further processed fish oil, which he used in soap, paint, salad dressing, and shortening.

Hovden Cannery freight platform, c. 1975. Spur has already been removed. [Monterey County Photo Archives]

Women working in the Hovden Cannery, c. 1940s.
[Monterey Water Front Cannery Row Tours]

Like most of the canneries that flanked the Southern Pacific Railroad's Monterey Branch tracks, Hovden had its own railroad spur, installed no later than August 1926 when it first appears on Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. It was a northward exiting spur, which makes it slightly unique among those in the area as boxcars would have to be backed into this relatively short spur rather than allowed to roll to a stop by passing Pacific Grove-bound trains. The spur terminated just before David Avenue beside the Hovden warehouse, and a freight platform ran behind both the warehouse and the can storage room. Unusually for Cannery Row photographs, this freight platform survives in photographs, such as the c. 1975 photo above. It shows the backs of the warehouse and can storage building sitting side-by-side with a mostly covered (and deteriorating platform. The spur has already been removed in this photograph, but the end of the spur can still be recognized by a ramp at the far right end. The tracks remain in place at the time this photograph was taken, suggesting the spur was removed after 1962 but before 1975. The tracks themselves were cut back to Seaside in 1978.

Hovden Cannery boilers, sitting abandoned, c. 1975.  [Monterey County Photo Archives]

Hovden Cannery, main entrance, c. 1975. [Monterey County Photo Archives]

The crash of the sardine industry after World War II impacted this cannery less than others. Hovden had diversified with his reduction plant, and he had also spread out to can non-sardine fish species during World War II. This allowed his company to ride the tide for a while. Hovden himself retired in 1951 and Stanford University's adjacent Hopkins Marine Station purchased the cannery in 1967. They allowed the Wilbur-Ellis Company of San Francisco to continue running the facility under the name Portola Packing Company, but Wilbur-Ellis closed the factory down in February 1973, the last of the canneries to close on the Row. For the next four years, Stanford would use the vacant building for storage, allowing the structures to decay until a fire burned the large warehouse across the street and ruined the attached conveyor in 1977. Much of the facility was demolished over the subsequent three years, leaving only part of the canning room and the large boilers with accompanying smokestacks intact.

Hovden Cannery and warehouse after the last fire, July 12, 1977. [Pat Hathaway]

Demolition of the Hovden Cannery, 1980. [Pat Hathaway]

Opening day of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, October 20, 1984.
[Pat Hathaway]

Fortunately for visitors interested in the Hovden Cannery, much of it has been rebuilt, at least externally. In 1978, the organization that would become the Monterey Bay Aquarium purchased the entire property from Stanford University and began converting it into an aquarium and animal rescue center. The warehouse and other structures burned and demolished over the previous decade were rebuilt to resemble externally the original structures. The boilers and smokestack remain in place at their original locations, while the original canning room can be viewed behind the ticketing station with some images and history of the original facility. The only structure that was never rebuilt in any form was the can storage room, which is now the employee parking lot. The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened on October 20, 1984, after two years of construction, and remains today one of the foremost attractions on California's Central Coast.

Street Address, Geo-Coordinates & Current Status:
886 Cannery Row
36.618˚N, 121.892˚ W

The Hovden Cannery is almost every day of the year as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, although admission is required to view the historical plaques, artifacts, and boilers found within the surviving warehouse structure.

Citations & Credits:

• Architectural Resources Group and Architects, Planners & Conservators, Inc. "San Carlos Park". Primary Record. State of California – The Resources Agency. Department of Parks and Recreation. In Final Cannery Row Cultural Resources Survey Report Document, Monterey, CA, 2001.
• Chiang, Connie Y. Shaping the Shoreline: Fisheries and Tourism on the Monterey Coast. University of Washington Press, 2009.
• Library of Congress. Historic photographs and plans for the Hovden Cannery.
• Ventimiglia, Mike. Images of America: Monterey Fire Department. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

Cannery Row: San Xaxier Fish Packing Company

Directly in the middle of Cannery Row and acting as the axis at which point the road and Southern Pacific Railroad right-of-way took a hard turn to the northwest once sat the San Xavier Fish Packing Company. The company was founded by Frank E. Raiter, a Swiss immigrant who spent many years in the wine industry before moving to Monterey and becoming a fish packer in 1917. His first business seems to have been a small cannery located between Ocean View Avenue and the railroad tracks at the bottom of the northern half of Cannery Row built in 1923. Between 1926 and 1932, Raiter expanded his operations immensely and found the San Xavier Cannery. The San Xavier company did not only pack sardines, as some other local packing houses did, but it also canned tuna and albacore and produced fish meal and oil products. The company's most famous fish brands included Sierra, Triple A, San Xavier, Salaroc, and Silver Beauty.

A multiethnic blend of workers check the sardines at the San Xavier Cannery, c1930s.
[Images of America: Monterey's Waterfront]

Connected to the cannery via a second-story enclosed conveyor that crossed the road, the original Raiter cannery was converted into San Xavier's freight and export warehouse. This structure was a two-story, wood-frame structure erected atop a concrete slab, the latter of which remains in place today. The walls were also covered in corrugated steel sidings, matching the appearance of many of the other canneries on the road. The presence of an abandoned railroad tanker car parked beside the warehouse suggests that this cannery did have railroad service via a spur, but Sanborn maps from 1926 show no such track and the track has already been removed by 1962. Regardless of the presence of a spur, the company was certainly a patron of the railroad via shipments exported from their warehouse which had sat immediately beside the Monterey Branch right-of-way. If no spur or siding was present, loading was directly via the main track.

Stohan's Art Gallery and the former San Xavier Cannery reduction plant. [Scot Hampton]

In 1939, Raiter expanded his business to packing fruit and vegetables in the Salinas Valley. He expanded to the north in 1941 and added a small reduction plant to his complex. In 1944, he also purchased additional property to the south from Angelo Lucido who had purchased the demolished mansion and estate of Hugh Tevis, who had been built a palatial complex between Reeside and Drake Streets in 1901. By this point in time, it seems Lucido was interested in purchasing the San Xavier Fish Packing Company outright, although when that transaction occurred is not known to this author. In 1952, the cannery was featured heavily in the Marilyn Monroe film Clash By Night, which makes this one of the best recorded canneries along Cannery Row. Check out thirteen minutes of the film here.

San Xavier Cannery burning down after a suspicious fire was set nearby, October 1967.
[Images of America: Monterey Fire Department]

Enclosed conveyor collapsing into the road, 1967. [Monterey Herald]

Lucido and his company ran the San Xavier Cannery until 1962, at which point the various structures took on lives of their own. The cannery itself burned to the ground on October 10, 1967, leaving the ruins that are still visible there today. The large warehouse appears to have been abandoned beside the railroad tracks, slowly deteriorating until the City of Monterey demolished it in 1997 due to safety concerns and to make room for a condominium complex that was planned but later halted due to public concerns. The reduction plant briefly became a kelp-processing facility after 1967 and continued in that capacity until 1975, when it became Stohan's Art Gallery. The building has stood vacant since 1997 and is currently gated off from the public.

The San Xavier Cannery the day after the fire, October 1967. [Images of America: Monterey Fire Department]

Street Address, Geo-Coordinates & Current Status:
435, 480, 484 Cannery Row
36.613˚N, 121.898˚ W

In many ways, the San Xavier Cannery ruins are unique among those on Cannery Row because they are entirely visible and partially accessible to the public. The former warehouse is an annex parking lot raised on all sides by the former foundations of the structure. In fact, a steel fish oil storage tank still sits rusting at the back of the lot. There is also a half-buried railroad tanker car that had originally been used to store fuel oil for the cannery. Across the street, between the abandoned Stohan's Gallery and the Chart House restaurant, the ruins of the San Xavier Cannery can be viewed through a chain-linked fence. This is also arguably the most extensive ruin on Cannery Row, with the remains of a fish ladder and the walls all clear from the road.

Citations & Credits:

• Architectural Resources Group and Architects, Planners & Conservators, Inc. "San Carlos Park". Primary Record. State of California – The Resources Agency. Department of Parks and Recreation. In Final Cannery Row Cultural Resources Survey Report Document, Monterey, CA, 2001.
• Thomas, Tim, and Dennis Copeland. Images of America: Monterey's Waterfront. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.
• Ventimiglia, Mike. Images of America: Monterey Fire Department. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

Curiosities: The Hihn Railroad Grade

Santa Cruz County map, 1929. [UCSC]

A peculiarity in Santa Cruz County is the presence of a long forgotten piece of history that meanders along the east side of Soquel Creek for over five miles from Park Avenue above Capitola Village to Olive Springs Road on the western fringe of the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. This relic of a long lost age is the Hihn Railroad Grade, a bygone project of an optimistic time. Meandering through the Soquel Creek basin, this right-of-way was never used by any railroad but its nearly 150-year-old grade remains a mostly unused and only partially owned path that runs behind and acts as the boundary for over a hundred homes and businesses in Soquel and the unincorporated area above it.

In the late 1860s and the early 1870s, Frederick Augustus Hihn was desperate for a railroad in Santa Cruz County. Hihn was a local entrepreneur, an immigrant from Germany who came to California during the Gold Rush in 1849. He moved to Santa Cruz County in 1851 and quickly became one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the city. In 1856, Hihn purchased 12/19ths of Martina Castro's massive Rancho Shoquel Aumentación, which was composed primarily of endless tracts of old growth redwood trees alongside Soquel and Aptos Creeks. Hihn's new holdings ran to the headwaters of Soquel Creek as well as up many of its tributaries. In 1860, Hihn also purchased 404 acres of Rancho Shoquel, receiving that lot as part of a mortgage settlement. Over 5,000 acres of timber were estimated to be in the rancho lands that Hihn owned. Unfortunately for the magnate, he had no easy way to transport any of this potential wealth to the word beyond. Previous lumber operations in the area had relied upon oxen- and mule-driven methods that were slow, dangerous, and limited in their capacities.

Hihn's plan was to built a standard-gauged railroad up from the proposed route that would run along the coast to the mill of his business partners, the Grovers—J. Lyman, Stephan Frealon, Whitney, and Dwight W.—who had operated out of Bates Creek since 1866. Once his route was completed, he would transport the timber to a large lumber and planing mill located near the mainline at the beach. In reality, this was just a part of a much larger scheme that would have, in essence, created the route between Santa Cruz County and the city of San José nearly a decade earlier than the South Pacific Coast and via a drastically different right-of-way that would have bypassed the San Lorenzo watershed entirely. Part threat and part actual intent, the proposal for a standard-gauged railroad running directly between San José and Soquel was used by Hihn as a bargaining chip while negotiating the right-of-way for the Santa Cruz & Watsonville Railroad. The proposed route, which was surveyed in the summer of 1871, would have followed the later route of the South Pacific Coast up to the region of modern-day Laurel, at which point it would have passed through a tunnel into the greater Soquel basin. The route would have then meandered down the east bank of the river until terminating at the Soquel Landing pier. But both ventures ultimately failed, and the plans changed when the Santa Cruz Railroad eventually passed through the area in 1874. Rather than heading straight out to sea, the final alignment of Hihn's Railroad Grade—by now repurposed as a long narrow-gauged lumber long—arced to the east in a wide loop, eventually joining with the railroad track on the bluff above Soquel Landing. This adjustment clearly shows Hihn's intent as late as 1874 to build a railroad line between Soquel and his timber tracts.

Grover mill up Bates Creek, 1883. [Soquel Pioneer and Historical Association]

The land for this railroad was parcelled out from the rancho and established as a separate continuous tract, 40 feet wide and roughly five miles long. The right-of-way never crossed Soquel Creek once, although it certainly crossed a number of smaller feeder creeks and streams, the largest of which was Bates Creek itself just outside of Soquel. One question that immediately presents itself to anyone interested in this line is: was it ever used for a railroad? For the most part, the answer to that question is a definitive no. From as early as 1885, the property boundary records and parcel maps refer to the right-of-way as the "Hihn Railroad Grade", which implies it remained unused. By that time, Hihn was already working on a different railroad route up the nearby Aptos Creek to access the mill of the Loma Prieta Lumber Company, in which he had a significant stake. But a portion of this right-of-way may have been used. From the 1870s, it seems that Hihn maintained a lumber yard immediately beside the Santa Cruz Railroad line and it seems highly likely that at least a short spur was extended down the grade. Even more convincing, however, is that from 1874, the California Beet Sugar Company operated a sugar beet refinery above the modern site of Nob Hill Foods, and Hihn Company records suggest that a railroad spur was to be extended to this factory. Assuming this company spur was built, it would have run along the Hihn Railroad Grade until reaching modern-day State Route 1, at which point it would have turned west off the grade. A Santa Cruz Sentinel article from February 1874 notes that the factory was only 60 yards from the track, which is impossible without a spur considering the factory was over 1/4 mile from the mainline right-of-way and also sat alongside Soquel Creek far below the tracks which ran above over a trestle. The factory relocated in 1884 and few maps show its extent, making confirmation of its railroad spur difficult to determine.

A homestead along Soquel Creek with the roof of the defunct California Beet Sugar warehouse in the distance, 1887.
[Polhemus family, Edith C. Smith Collection, Sourisseau Academy, San Jose State University]

Throughout this time, the Soquel timber tracts remained a relatively minor operation, the purview of the Grovers who also operated mills in Boulder Creek, Scotts Valley, and Porter Gulch. Over the years, the Grovers constructed two more mills in the area while Hihn himself built a small isolated cable railway south of Laurel near the headwaters of Soquel Creek, but only steam donkeys were used here, no locomotives. By 1916, Hihn returned to the lower Soquel area to complete the job he left undone half-a-century earlier. But this time, he decided to use rugged motor trucks newly designed for use by the military in Europe. Although using the old Hihn Railway Grade was discussed, it was dismissed as unprofitable, with a cost of at least $42,000 required and up to 10 miles of track needed to reach all of the possible tracts.

Hihn's flume through Soquel in the mid-1880s. [Images of America: Soquel]

Just because the route was never used for a railroad does not mean it went unused. One strong possibility is that the right-of-way was repurposed by Hihn in the 1880s for a flume which he installed along Soquel Creek to service the South Coast Paper Mill, which first opened around 1879. This flume also accepted sewage from Soquel School and a tent campground. Notably, it is said that this flume went subterranean for 300 feet as it approached Depot Hill and then exited in a direction toward Aptos. The unedited map above from 1929 notes a change in the Hihn Railroad Grade in roughly this same area, with the map-maker changing the sold line to dashes implying a subterranean portion of right-of-way. Generally, this implies the existence of a tunnel. Indeed, the paper mill was still in operation as late as 1931 – two years after the map was made – and may have still used the flume or some successor to it until this date.

1948 aerial view of the Santa Cruz Airport at Capitola showing its two perpendicular runways. [Airfields-Freeman]

However, it is likely this final stretch of grade was removed as early as 1926 when the Santa Cruz Airport was opened directly atop the old grade. The main purpose of this air field was to support the adjacent Camp McQuaide, home of the 250th Coast Artillery, but over the years it became a regular operation for small commercial flights. The entire property was purchased at this time by the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, explaining why the railroad grade parcel boundaries no longer appear in this area today. The airport was closed in September 1954 and by the mid-1960s, the entire area had been subdivided and developed.

Hihn Railroad Grade at the intersection of Glenhaven Rd. and Cherrvale Ave. The private road is not, in actuality, the
grade, but rather the grade runs along the bottom of the hill at left where the sign sits. [Google StreetView] 

Regardless of whether it was used or not, the majority of the grade still exists as a series of independent parcels running primarily between Soquel Drive and Olive Springs Road. Most of these parcels are undeveloped, although roads and homes populate some portions, especially those nearer to the town of Soquel. Today, one would not notice the former railroad grade, but it is still there. From the Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Railway tracks at the intersection of Washburn Avenue and Park Street, the grade curves wide to the northeast and has been entirely developed over. But it reappears as Kennedy Drive briefly before crossing State Route 1 and cutting through more housing, until reaching Aguazul Drive. From there, the grade runs behind the Christian Science Church and Main Street Elementary School, as well as numerous homes. At the intersection of Glenhaven Road and Cherryvale Avenue, the grade acts as a third direction, passing almost directly between the split before making a wide arc to the east and then briefly returning to Cherryvale Avenue. Its path continues north, crossing High Gulch Road and briefly becoming Bobcat Trail. It then crosses High Gulch two more times before definitively disappearing into the Soquel Augmentation Rancho wilderness. Its terminus is located somewhere east of Mountain Elementary School in a deep second-growth forest.

Citations & Credits:

• Clark, Donald. Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2008.
• "Entry #466-468." F. A. Hihn Company's Agreements, Deeds, & Leases, vol. 2. University of California, Santa Cruz. Edited and curated by Stanley Stevens.
• F. A. Hihn Company Collection. University of California, Santa Cruz. Edited and curated by Stanley Stevens.
• Freeman, Paul. "California: Monterey area". Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields, 2016.
• Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1871-1874.
• Soquel Pioneer and Historical Association, Images of America: Soquel. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011.
• Stevens, Stanley, personal correspondence.
• University of California, Santa Cruz. "1929 Santa Cruz County Map". UCSC Map Library Collections.
• Young, John V. Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 2002.