Indian Chief Travel Guides

Monterey Peninsula: an Overview

The Monterey Peninsula is one of California’s loveliest and most historic regions, located along the north Central Coast of California, at the southern end of Monterey Bay. It encompasses thousands of acres of unspoiled coastal wilderness, including a couple of stunning nature preserves with sea lion colonies and shorebird habitats. Here you’ll find white-sand beaches and craggy cliffs, cypress forests and low, coastal hills, oceanfront greens and fairways, real sand dunes and fertile valleys fanning out farther inland.

The Monterey Peninsula comprises roughly 35 square miles, largely consisting of the Del Monte Forest, a beautiful, 8,400-acre cypress forest, which includes Pebble Beach, famous the world over as the home of golf. At the north end of the peninsula are the historic towns of Monterey and Pacific Grove, situated adjacent to each other, and at the southern end, at the head of Carmel Bay, sits the picturesque little village of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Inland from Carmel and the Del Monte Forest lies Carmel Valley, largely pastoral, and farther east still is the fertile Salinas Valley, birthplace of novelist John Steinbeck. To the south of the peninsula, stretching some 90 miles along the coastal Santa Lucia Mountains, is Big Sur, offering in it one of the world’s most scenic coastal drives.

The Monterey Peninsula lies approximately 125 miles south of San Francisco (or 345 miles north of Los Angeles), reached more or less directly on Highway 1. An alternate route is by way of Highway 101 south to Salinas some 110 miles, then Highway 68 southwestward another 15 miles or so to the Monterey Peninsula. There is also a commercial airport at Monterey.