The Landmarks of Sicilian Monterey
Cannery Row (Ocean View Avenue). The working waterfront where the canneries stood and where Sicilian crews unloaded their catch. The reduction plants and packing houses are gone or repurposed, but the street still carries the name Steinbeck gave it, and the old industrial buildings remain as the spine of the district.
San Carlos Cathedral, 500 Church Street. The Royal Presidio Chapel, built in 1791 to 1794, is the oldest continuously operating parish in California and the spiritual anchor of the Sicilian community. Families were baptised and married here, and in 1933 the fishermen donated a statue of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, to the church.
Spaghetti Hill. The hillside neighbourhood above old Monterey where the first Sicilian families settled, between High, Larkin, Madison and Scott Streets. The frame houses are still there, even if many residents are no longer Italian.
Fisherman’s Wharf. Once the heart of the commercial fleet, now a row of restaurants, many still run by descendants of the fishing families. Cafe Fina, Domenico’s and others on and around the wharf trace their roots to Sicilian Monterey.
The Sardine Factory, 701 Wave Street. Opened in 1968 by Bert Cutino, whose family carried one of the great Sicilian fishing names, the restaurant became a monument to the era and a gathering place for the community that had worked the canneries.
Custom House Plaza. The downtown square beside the old Custom House where the annual Festa Italia, also known as the Santa Rosalia festival, is held each September, ending with the procession and blessing of the fishing fleet.
Where the Monterey Sicilians Came From
The Monterey Sicilians did not come from all over Sicily. They came from a tight cluster of fishing villages and islands off the western tip of the island, above all Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo.
These were places where fishing was the whole economy and the sea was the only road out. Marettimo in particular sent so many of its people to Monterey that today an estimated 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in the city, and the island’s small museum documents the journey, including an emigrant’s account painted onto the sword of a swordfish.
The names that came across still ring through Monterey: Ferrante, Cutino, Lucido, Panetta, Pennisi, Alioto, Spataro, Aliotti, Enea, Balbo. In 2017 the Italian Heritage Society helped establish a formal sister-city relationship between Monterey and Isola delle Femmine, closing a loop that had been open for more than a century.
The same forces pulled fishing families from across the Mediterranean and the Pacific to the California coast. The Croatian fishermen of San Pedro and the Portuguese tuna families of Point Loma followed parallel paths, each village chasing the fish that had sustained it back home.
Monterey Today
Cannery Row is now a tourist destination, anchored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which occupies the shell of the old Hovden cannery. The whistles are long silent and the sardine fleet is gone. But the Sicilian community did not disappear.
Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian populations in the United States. Walk Fisherman’s Wharf and you will find restaurants run by Cutinos, Pennisis and others, and a working fleet far smaller than the old days but still bearing Sicilian surnames. The Pennisi family, among others, keeps commercial fishing alive in the bay.
Every September the community turns out in force for Festa Italia at Custom House Plaza. The 2025 edition, the 92nd, ran from the 5th to the 7th of September, and the celebration still ends the way it has since 1933, with a procession carrying Santa Rosalia down to the water and the blessing of the fleet. The neighbourhoods may have changed, but the saint still goes to the sea. It is the same instinct that keeps other Pacific coast enclaves alive, like the families of Japantown in San Jose, where heritage outlasts the industry that first drew people in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Sicilians settle in Monterey, California?
The Italians in Monterey, California were almost all Sicilians drawn by the sardine-rich waters of Monterey Bay, which reminded them of the fishing grounds back home. Pietro Ferrante, who arrived around 1903, recruited families from his native western Sicily to work the fishery and the canneries, and chain migration did the rest.
Is Monterey still Italian today?
Yes. Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian communities in the United States, with Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants and a small working fleet still run by descendants of the original fishing families. The annual Festa Italia and the Italian Catholic Federation keep the heritage active.
What are the most famous Italian landmarks in Monterey?
Cannery Row, the old working waterfront, is the most famous. Others include San Carlos Cathedral, where the fishermen donated their statue of Santa Rosalia in 1933, the Spaghetti Hill neighbourhood, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Custom House Plaza, where Festa Italia is held each September.
Where in Sicily did the Monterey Italians come from?
Most came from a cluster of fishing villages off western Sicily, above all the island of Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo. So many came from Marettimo that around 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in Monterey today.
When did Italians first arrive in Monterey?
The first Sicilian fishermen reached Monterey in the 1890s, joining established Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese fishing communities. The major wave came after Pietro Ferrante began recruiting families around 1917, and within a generation upward of 300 Sicilian families had settled on the Monterey Peninsula.
If your family’s story passed through Monterey, or through any of the small Sicilian islands that sent their fishermen across an ocean, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Marettimo and Isola delle Femmine to Spaghetti Hill, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources: Cannery Row on Wikipedia and the Italian Enclaves Historical Society.
Monterey at Its Peak
By the early 1940s, more than 30 canneries and reduction plants lined Ocean View Avenue, and Monterey was processing close to a quarter of a million tons of sardines in a single season. The Sicilian fleet, by then running powerful purse seiners alongside the old lampara boats, fished from dusk through the night and brought the catch in before dawn.
Then the whistles blew. Each cannery had its own, and women all over town would drop what they were doing and head for the line. In the peak years Sicilian women made up roughly a third of the cannery workforce, packing sardines into cans through shifts that could stretch 12 to 15 hours when the fish were running hard.
This was a community that organised itself around the sea and the saints. The men prayed for safe passage and a full hold. The women packed the fish their husbands and fathers caught. The whole arrangement ran on family, dialect and a shared memory of small Sicilian islands.
The pattern echoed other Italian fishing colonies taking root on the Pacific coast in the same era, from the Italians who built North Beach in San Francisco to the tight-knit fishing communities further south. Monterey’s contribution was a single fish, harvested at a scale the world had never seen.
The Change
It ended almost as fast as it began. In the late 1940s the sardines started to vanish, and through the 1950s the collapse became total. A season that once landed nearly a quarter of a million tons fell to under a thousand tons by the mid-1950s, a drop of more than 90 percent in five years.
Overfishing was part of it. So were natural shifts in ocean temperature and the sardine’s own boom-and-bust cycle, compounded by pollution in the bay. The fish that had built Cannery Row simply stopped coming.
The canneries closed one by one. By 1958 only a handful were still operating, switching to tuna, mackerel and anchovy, and the last cannery shut its doors in 1973. Steinbeck had already turned the street into literature with his 1945 novel Cannery Row, and now the real thing fell silent.
The Landmarks of Sicilian Monterey
Cannery Row (Ocean View Avenue). The working waterfront where the canneries stood and where Sicilian crews unloaded their catch. The reduction plants and packing houses are gone or repurposed, but the street still carries the name Steinbeck gave it, and the old industrial buildings remain as the spine of the district.
San Carlos Cathedral, 500 Church Street. The Royal Presidio Chapel, built in 1791 to 1794, is the oldest continuously operating parish in California and the spiritual anchor of the Sicilian community. Families were baptised and married here, and in 1933 the fishermen donated a statue of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, to the church.
Spaghetti Hill. The hillside neighbourhood above old Monterey where the first Sicilian families settled, between High, Larkin, Madison and Scott Streets. The frame houses are still there, even if many residents are no longer Italian.
Fisherman’s Wharf. Once the heart of the commercial fleet, now a row of restaurants, many still run by descendants of the fishing families. Cafe Fina, Domenico’s and others on and around the wharf trace their roots to Sicilian Monterey.
The Sardine Factory, 701 Wave Street. Opened in 1968 by Bert Cutino, whose family carried one of the great Sicilian fishing names, the restaurant became a monument to the era and a gathering place for the community that had worked the canneries.
Custom House Plaza. The downtown square beside the old Custom House where the annual Festa Italia, also known as the Santa Rosalia festival, is held each September, ending with the procession and blessing of the fishing fleet.
Where the Monterey Sicilians Came From
The Monterey Sicilians did not come from all over Sicily. They came from a tight cluster of fishing villages and islands off the western tip of the island, above all Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo.
These were places where fishing was the whole economy and the sea was the only road out. Marettimo in particular sent so many of its people to Monterey that today an estimated 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in the city, and the island’s small museum documents the journey, including an emigrant’s account painted onto the sword of a swordfish.
The names that came across still ring through Monterey: Ferrante, Cutino, Lucido, Panetta, Pennisi, Alioto, Spataro, Aliotti, Enea, Balbo. In 2017 the Italian Heritage Society helped establish a formal sister-city relationship between Monterey and Isola delle Femmine, closing a loop that had been open for more than a century.
The same forces pulled fishing families from across the Mediterranean and the Pacific to the California coast. The Croatian fishermen of San Pedro and the Portuguese tuna families of Point Loma followed parallel paths, each village chasing the fish that had sustained it back home.
Monterey Today
Cannery Row is now a tourist destination, anchored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which occupies the shell of the old Hovden cannery. The whistles are long silent and the sardine fleet is gone. But the Sicilian community did not disappear.
Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian populations in the United States. Walk Fisherman’s Wharf and you will find restaurants run by Cutinos, Pennisis and others, and a working fleet far smaller than the old days but still bearing Sicilian surnames. The Pennisi family, among others, keeps commercial fishing alive in the bay.
Every September the community turns out in force for Festa Italia at Custom House Plaza. The 2025 edition, the 92nd, ran from the 5th to the 7th of September, and the celebration still ends the way it has since 1933, with a procession carrying Santa Rosalia down to the water and the blessing of the fleet. The neighbourhoods may have changed, but the saint still goes to the sea. It is the same instinct that keeps other Pacific coast enclaves alive, like the families of Japantown in San Jose, where heritage outlasts the industry that first drew people in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Sicilians settle in Monterey, California?
The Italians in Monterey, California were almost all Sicilians drawn by the sardine-rich waters of Monterey Bay, which reminded them of the fishing grounds back home. Pietro Ferrante, who arrived around 1903, recruited families from his native western Sicily to work the fishery and the canneries, and chain migration did the rest.
Is Monterey still Italian today?
Yes. Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian communities in the United States, with Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants and a small working fleet still run by descendants of the original fishing families. The annual Festa Italia and the Italian Catholic Federation keep the heritage active.
What are the most famous Italian landmarks in Monterey?
Cannery Row, the old working waterfront, is the most famous. Others include San Carlos Cathedral, where the fishermen donated their statue of Santa Rosalia in 1933, the Spaghetti Hill neighbourhood, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Custom House Plaza, where Festa Italia is held each September.
Where in Sicily did the Monterey Italians come from?
Most came from a cluster of fishing villages off western Sicily, above all the island of Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo. So many came from Marettimo that around 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in Monterey today.
When did Italians first arrive in Monterey?
The first Sicilian fishermen reached Monterey in the 1890s, joining established Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese fishing communities. The major wave came after Pietro Ferrante began recruiting families around 1917, and within a generation upward of 300 Sicilian families had settled on the Monterey Peninsula.
If your family’s story passed through Monterey, or through any of the small Sicilian islands that sent their fishermen across an ocean, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Marettimo and Isola delle Femmine to Spaghetti Hill, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources: Cannery Row on Wikipedia and the Italian Enclaves Historical Society.
They came from islands so small you can walk across them in an afternoon. By the 1930s, if you stood on Ocean View Avenue in Monterey when the boats came in heavy with sardines, you heard Sicilian dialect over the rumble of the reduction plants and the scream of cannery whistles, each one pitched differently so a packer could tell from her kitchen which plant was calling her to the line. The Italians in Monterey, California did not just work the sardine fishery. They built it, and for a few decades they made this stretch of the central California coast the sardine capital of the world.
Monterey: The Place
Monterey sits on the southern hook of Monterey Bay, about two hours south of San Francisco on the central California coast. The water here is cold, deep and rich, a submarine canyon offshore feeding one of the most productive fishing grounds in the Pacific.
The Sicilians clustered first on a steep rise above the old town that everyone came to call Spaghetti Hill, roughly bounded by High Street, Larkin Street, Madison Street and Scott Street. From those modest frame houses it was a short walk down to the wharf and to Ocean View Avenue, the working waterfront that John Steinbeck would later rename Cannery Row.
How Monterey Became Sicilian
Before the Sicilians
The Sicilians were not the first to fish Monterey Bay. Chinese fishermen had built a village on the shoreline in the 1850s, drying squid and abalone, and Japanese and Portuguese crews worked the bay through the late nineteenth century.
When the first Sicilian fishermen began arriving in the 1890s, they joined an already crowded, multi-ethnic waterfront. What they brought was a different way of catching fish, and a willingness to chase a species nobody else had figured out how to harvest at scale.
The Sicilians Arrive
The pivotal figure was Pietro Ferrante, remembered locally as the grandfather of the Monterey fishermen. A native of the island of Isola delle Femmine off the coast of Palermo, Ferrante reached Monterey around 1903 and saw what the bay’s cold water held: sardines, in numbers nobody was touching.
In 1906 he introduced the lampara net, a Sicilian design built around two wings and a deep central purse that scooped up whole schools at once. It was far more efficient than anything then in use on the bay, and it transformed the fishery almost overnight.
Ferrante did more than fish. He recruited. Beginning around 1917, working with the Booth cannery, he encouraged a second migration of Sicilian families to Monterey, many of them by way of the coal town of Pittsburg in the Sacramento delta. Over the following decades upward of 300 families made the move to the Monterey Peninsula.
This was chain migration in its purest form. A man came, found work, then sent for his brothers, his cousins, his neighbours from the same village across the sea. Whole streets of Spaghetti Hill came to mirror the particular Sicilian towns their residents had left behind, complete with their own priest, cobbler and butcher.
Monterey at Its Peak
By the early 1940s, more than 30 canneries and reduction plants lined Ocean View Avenue, and Monterey was processing close to a quarter of a million tons of sardines in a single season. The Sicilian fleet, by then running powerful purse seiners alongside the old lampara boats, fished from dusk through the night and brought the catch in before dawn.
Then the whistles blew. Each cannery had its own, and women all over town would drop what they were doing and head for the line. In the peak years Sicilian women made up roughly a third of the cannery workforce, packing sardines into cans through shifts that could stretch 12 to 15 hours when the fish were running hard.
This was a community that organised itself around the sea and the saints. The men prayed for safe passage and a full hold. The women packed the fish their husbands and fathers caught. The whole arrangement ran on family, dialect and a shared memory of small Sicilian islands.
The pattern echoed other Italian fishing colonies taking root on the Pacific coast in the same era, from the Italians who built North Beach in San Francisco to the tight-knit fishing communities further south. Monterey’s contribution was a single fish, harvested at a scale the world had never seen.
The Change
It ended almost as fast as it began. In the late 1940s the sardines started to vanish, and through the 1950s the collapse became total. A season that once landed nearly a quarter of a million tons fell to under a thousand tons by the mid-1950s, a drop of more than 90 percent in five years.
Overfishing was part of it. So were natural shifts in ocean temperature and the sardine’s own boom-and-bust cycle, compounded by pollution in the bay. The fish that had built Cannery Row simply stopped coming.
The canneries closed one by one. By 1958 only a handful were still operating, switching to tuna, mackerel and anchovy, and the last cannery shut its doors in 1973. Steinbeck had already turned the street into literature with his 1945 novel Cannery Row, and now the real thing fell silent.
The Landmarks of Sicilian Monterey
Cannery Row (Ocean View Avenue). The working waterfront where the canneries stood and where Sicilian crews unloaded their catch. The reduction plants and packing houses are gone or repurposed, but the street still carries the name Steinbeck gave it, and the old industrial buildings remain as the spine of the district.
San Carlos Cathedral, 500 Church Street. The Royal Presidio Chapel, built in 1791 to 1794, is the oldest continuously operating parish in California and the spiritual anchor of the Sicilian community. Families were baptised and married here, and in 1933 the fishermen donated a statue of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, to the church.
Spaghetti Hill. The hillside neighbourhood above old Monterey where the first Sicilian families settled, between High, Larkin, Madison and Scott Streets. The frame houses are still there, even if many residents are no longer Italian.
Fisherman’s Wharf. Once the heart of the commercial fleet, now a row of restaurants, many still run by descendants of the fishing families. Cafe Fina, Domenico’s and others on and around the wharf trace their roots to Sicilian Monterey.
The Sardine Factory, 701 Wave Street. Opened in 1968 by Bert Cutino, whose family carried one of the great Sicilian fishing names, the restaurant became a monument to the era and a gathering place for the community that had worked the canneries.
Custom House Plaza. The downtown square beside the old Custom House where the annual Festa Italia, also known as the Santa Rosalia festival, is held each September, ending with the procession and blessing of the fishing fleet.
Where the Monterey Sicilians Came From
The Monterey Sicilians did not come from all over Sicily. They came from a tight cluster of fishing villages and islands off the western tip of the island, above all Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo.
These were places where fishing was the whole economy and the sea was the only road out. Marettimo in particular sent so many of its people to Monterey that today an estimated 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in the city, and the island’s small museum documents the journey, including an emigrant’s account painted onto the sword of a swordfish.
The names that came across still ring through Monterey: Ferrante, Cutino, Lucido, Panetta, Pennisi, Alioto, Spataro, Aliotti, Enea, Balbo. In 2017 the Italian Heritage Society helped establish a formal sister-city relationship between Monterey and Isola delle Femmine, closing a loop that had been open for more than a century.
The same forces pulled fishing families from across the Mediterranean and the Pacific to the California coast. The Croatian fishermen of San Pedro and the Portuguese tuna families of Point Loma followed parallel paths, each village chasing the fish that had sustained it back home.
Monterey Today
Cannery Row is now a tourist destination, anchored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which occupies the shell of the old Hovden cannery. The whistles are long silent and the sardine fleet is gone. But the Sicilian community did not disappear.
Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian populations in the United States. Walk Fisherman’s Wharf and you will find restaurants run by Cutinos, Pennisis and others, and a working fleet far smaller than the old days but still bearing Sicilian surnames. The Pennisi family, among others, keeps commercial fishing alive in the bay.
Every September the community turns out in force for Festa Italia at Custom House Plaza. The 2025 edition, the 92nd, ran from the 5th to the 7th of September, and the celebration still ends the way it has since 1933, with a procession carrying Santa Rosalia down to the water and the blessing of the fleet. The neighbourhoods may have changed, but the saint still goes to the sea. It is the same instinct that keeps other Pacific coast enclaves alive, like the families of Japantown in San Jose, where heritage outlasts the industry that first drew people in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Sicilians settle in Monterey, California?
The Italians in Monterey, California were almost all Sicilians drawn by the sardine-rich waters of Monterey Bay, which reminded them of the fishing grounds back home. Pietro Ferrante, who arrived around 1903, recruited families from his native western Sicily to work the fishery and the canneries, and chain migration did the rest.
Is Monterey still Italian today?
Yes. Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian communities in the United States, with Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants and a small working fleet still run by descendants of the original fishing families. The annual Festa Italia and the Italian Catholic Federation keep the heritage active.
What are the most famous Italian landmarks in Monterey?
Cannery Row, the old working waterfront, is the most famous. Others include San Carlos Cathedral, where the fishermen donated their statue of Santa Rosalia in 1933, the Spaghetti Hill neighbourhood, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Custom House Plaza, where Festa Italia is held each September.
Where in Sicily did the Monterey Italians come from?
Most came from a cluster of fishing villages off western Sicily, above all the island of Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo. So many came from Marettimo that around 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in Monterey today.
When did Italians first arrive in Monterey?
The first Sicilian fishermen reached Monterey in the 1890s, joining established Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese fishing communities. The major wave came after Pietro Ferrante began recruiting families around 1917, and within a generation upward of 300 Sicilian families had settled on the Monterey Peninsula.
If your family’s story passed through Monterey, or through any of the small Sicilian islands that sent their fishermen across an ocean, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Marettimo and Isola delle Femmine to Spaghetti Hill, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources: Cannery Row on Wikipedia and the Italian Enclaves Historical Society.
They came from islands so small you can walk across them in an afternoon. By the 1930s, if you stood on Ocean View Avenue in Monterey when the boats came in heavy with sardines, you heard Sicilian dialect over the rumble of the reduction plants and the scream of cannery whistles, each one pitched differently so a packer could tell from her kitchen which plant was calling her to the line. The Italians in Monterey, California did not just work the sardine fishery. They built it, and for a few decades they made this stretch of the central California coast the sardine capital of the world.
Monterey: The Place
Monterey sits on the southern hook of Monterey Bay, about two hours south of San Francisco on the central California coast. The water here is cold, deep and rich, a submarine canyon offshore feeding one of the most productive fishing grounds in the Pacific.
The Sicilians clustered first on a steep rise above the old town that everyone came to call Spaghetti Hill, roughly bounded by High Street, Larkin Street, Madison Street and Scott Street. From those modest frame houses it was a short walk down to the wharf and to Ocean View Avenue, the working waterfront that John Steinbeck would later rename Cannery Row.
How Monterey Became Sicilian
Before the Sicilians
The Sicilians were not the first to fish Monterey Bay. Chinese fishermen had built a village on the shoreline in the 1850s, drying squid and abalone, and Japanese and Portuguese crews worked the bay through the late nineteenth century.
When the first Sicilian fishermen began arriving in the 1890s, they joined an already crowded, multi-ethnic waterfront. What they brought was a different way of catching fish, and a willingness to chase a species nobody else had figured out how to harvest at scale.
The Sicilians Arrive
The pivotal figure was Pietro Ferrante, remembered locally as the grandfather of the Monterey fishermen. A native of the island of Isola delle Femmine off the coast of Palermo, Ferrante reached Monterey around 1903 and saw what the bay’s cold water held: sardines, in numbers nobody was touching.
In 1906 he introduced the lampara net, a Sicilian design built around two wings and a deep central purse that scooped up whole schools at once. It was far more efficient than anything then in use on the bay, and it transformed the fishery almost overnight.
Ferrante did more than fish. He recruited. Beginning around 1917, working with the Booth cannery, he encouraged a second migration of Sicilian families to Monterey, many of them by way of the coal town of Pittsburg in the Sacramento delta. Over the following decades upward of 300 families made the move to the Monterey Peninsula.
This was chain migration in its purest form. A man came, found work, then sent for his brothers, his cousins, his neighbours from the same village across the sea. Whole streets of Spaghetti Hill came to mirror the particular Sicilian towns their residents had left behind, complete with their own priest, cobbler and butcher.
Monterey at Its Peak
By the early 1940s, more than 30 canneries and reduction plants lined Ocean View Avenue, and Monterey was processing close to a quarter of a million tons of sardines in a single season. The Sicilian fleet, by then running powerful purse seiners alongside the old lampara boats, fished from dusk through the night and brought the catch in before dawn.
Then the whistles blew. Each cannery had its own, and women all over town would drop what they were doing and head for the line. In the peak years Sicilian women made up roughly a third of the cannery workforce, packing sardines into cans through shifts that could stretch 12 to 15 hours when the fish were running hard.
This was a community that organised itself around the sea and the saints. The men prayed for safe passage and a full hold. The women packed the fish their husbands and fathers caught. The whole arrangement ran on family, dialect and a shared memory of small Sicilian islands.
The pattern echoed other Italian fishing colonies taking root on the Pacific coast in the same era, from the Italians who built North Beach in San Francisco to the tight-knit fishing communities further south. Monterey’s contribution was a single fish, harvested at a scale the world had never seen.
The Change
It ended almost as fast as it began. In the late 1940s the sardines started to vanish, and through the 1950s the collapse became total. A season that once landed nearly a quarter of a million tons fell to under a thousand tons by the mid-1950s, a drop of more than 90 percent in five years.
Overfishing was part of it. So were natural shifts in ocean temperature and the sardine’s own boom-and-bust cycle, compounded by pollution in the bay. The fish that had built Cannery Row simply stopped coming.
The canneries closed one by one. By 1958 only a handful were still operating, switching to tuna, mackerel and anchovy, and the last cannery shut its doors in 1973. Steinbeck had already turned the street into literature with his 1945 novel Cannery Row, and now the real thing fell silent.
The Landmarks of Sicilian Monterey
Cannery Row (Ocean View Avenue). The working waterfront where the canneries stood and where Sicilian crews unloaded their catch. The reduction plants and packing houses are gone or repurposed, but the street still carries the name Steinbeck gave it, and the old industrial buildings remain as the spine of the district.
San Carlos Cathedral, 500 Church Street. The Royal Presidio Chapel, built in 1791 to 1794, is the oldest continuously operating parish in California and the spiritual anchor of the Sicilian community. Families were baptised and married here, and in 1933 the fishermen donated a statue of Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, to the church.
Spaghetti Hill. The hillside neighbourhood above old Monterey where the first Sicilian families settled, between High, Larkin, Madison and Scott Streets. The frame houses are still there, even if many residents are no longer Italian.
Fisherman’s Wharf. Once the heart of the commercial fleet, now a row of restaurants, many still run by descendants of the fishing families. Cafe Fina, Domenico’s and others on and around the wharf trace their roots to Sicilian Monterey.
The Sardine Factory, 701 Wave Street. Opened in 1968 by Bert Cutino, whose family carried one of the great Sicilian fishing names, the restaurant became a monument to the era and a gathering place for the community that had worked the canneries.
Custom House Plaza. The downtown square beside the old Custom House where the annual Festa Italia, also known as the Santa Rosalia festival, is held each September, ending with the procession and blessing of the fishing fleet.
Where the Monterey Sicilians Came From
The Monterey Sicilians did not come from all over Sicily. They came from a tight cluster of fishing villages and islands off the western tip of the island, above all Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo.
These were places where fishing was the whole economy and the sea was the only road out. Marettimo in particular sent so many of its people to Monterey that today an estimated 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in the city, and the island’s small museum documents the journey, including an emigrant’s account painted onto the sword of a swordfish.
The names that came across still ring through Monterey: Ferrante, Cutino, Lucido, Panetta, Pennisi, Alioto, Spataro, Aliotti, Enea, Balbo. In 2017 the Italian Heritage Society helped establish a formal sister-city relationship between Monterey and Isola delle Femmine, closing a loop that had been open for more than a century.
The same forces pulled fishing families from across the Mediterranean and the Pacific to the California coast. The Croatian fishermen of San Pedro and the Portuguese tuna families of Point Loma followed parallel paths, each village chasing the fish that had sustained it back home.
Monterey Today
Cannery Row is now a tourist destination, anchored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which occupies the shell of the old Hovden cannery. The whistles are long silent and the sardine fleet is gone. But the Sicilian community did not disappear.
Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian populations in the United States. Walk Fisherman’s Wharf and you will find restaurants run by Cutinos, Pennisis and others, and a working fleet far smaller than the old days but still bearing Sicilian surnames. The Pennisi family, among others, keeps commercial fishing alive in the bay.
Every September the community turns out in force for Festa Italia at Custom House Plaza. The 2025 edition, the 92nd, ran from the 5th to the 7th of September, and the celebration still ends the way it has since 1933, with a procession carrying Santa Rosalia down to the water and the blessing of the fleet. The neighbourhoods may have changed, but the saint still goes to the sea. It is the same instinct that keeps other Pacific coast enclaves alive, like the families of Japantown in San Jose, where heritage outlasts the industry that first drew people in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Sicilians settle in Monterey, California?
The Italians in Monterey, California were almost all Sicilians drawn by the sardine-rich waters of Monterey Bay, which reminded them of the fishing grounds back home. Pietro Ferrante, who arrived around 1903, recruited families from his native western Sicily to work the fishery and the canneries, and chain migration did the rest.
Is Monterey still Italian today?
Yes. Monterey still holds one of the most concentrated Sicilian communities in the United States, with Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants and a small working fleet still run by descendants of the original fishing families. The annual Festa Italia and the Italian Catholic Federation keep the heritage active.
What are the most famous Italian landmarks in Monterey?
Cannery Row, the old working waterfront, is the most famous. Others include San Carlos Cathedral, where the fishermen donated their statue of Santa Rosalia in 1933, the Spaghetti Hill neighbourhood, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Custom House Plaza, where Festa Italia is held each September.
Where in Sicily did the Monterey Italians come from?
Most came from a cluster of fishing villages off western Sicily, above all the island of Marettimo in the Egadi archipelago, the islet of Isola delle Femmine near Palermo, and the town of San Vito Lo Capo. So many came from Marettimo that around 1,400 people of Marettimo descent live in Monterey today.
When did Italians first arrive in Monterey?
The first Sicilian fishermen reached Monterey in the 1890s, joining established Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese fishing communities. The major wave came after Pietro Ferrante began recruiting families around 1917, and within a generation upward of 300 Sicilian families had settled on the Monterey Peninsula.
If your family’s story passed through Monterey, or through any of the small Sicilian islands that sent their fishermen across an ocean, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Marettimo and Isola delle Femmine to Spaghetti Hill, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources: Cannery Row on Wikipedia and the Italian Enclaves Historical Society.