Early Salinas - Paperback

by Breschini Gary S. (Author), Trudy Haversat (Author)

The city of Salinas is named for the broad saltwater slough that once seeped in from Monterey Bay, saturating this plain between the Santa Lucia and Gavilian Mountains. Originally used as range land for cattle, a town developed from a stage stop after the Gold Rush, and the drained land produced grain and other crops. After World War I, immensely profitable large-scale lettuce, broccoli, and artichoke production, known as green gold, made Salinas one of the wealthiest cities in the United States. Isolated from its neighbors by mountains on both sides, early Salinas seemed a world unto itself, and its residents, both humble and wealthy, and the seemingly infinite green rows that surrounded it, provided similarly endless inspiration to novelist John Steinbeck, who recorded life here in the first half of the 20th century and imbued it with meaning.

Author Biography

Co-authors Gary S. Breschini and Trudy Haverstat, both archaeologists and teachers; and Mona Gudgel, executive director of the Monterey County Historical Society; are historians and recognized authorities on Salinas's past and the society's extensive photographic collection. Recently they teamed up to publish 10,000 Years on the Salinas Plain: An Illustrated History of Salinas City, California. Here they add learned commentary to the labels of over 200 precious early images of Salinas, the harvest of generations of collecting.