Since 1933, the Monterey County Historical Society has worked to preserve the history of this amazing part of California. We felt this was the best place to begin our history lessons.

The Historical grounds encompasses 200 years of local history.  The Jose Eusebio Boronda Adobe (1844), is an original fragment of Spanish California, an actual environment in which Monterey County people lived, slept and ate.

The Lagunita Schoolhouse was built in 1897 on San Juan Grade Road facing Sugar Loaf Mountain. This is the same little schoolhouse that John Steinbeck wrote about in The Red Pony. Truly a piece of Americana history.
Built by the famed architect William H. Weeks in 1898, his home was recently relocated here. The Society is in the process of restoring it to become a museum depicting the lifestyle of how people lived during that time.
This was an incredibly sad history lesson. The Bataan Memorial is dedicated to the one hundred and five brave men of Company C 194th Tank Battalion of the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys who were captured in Luzon, Philippine Islands, by Japanese forces and marched in the Bataan Death March. The town of Salinas lost more men per capita in that march than any other town in the United States.