Map of Pacific Grove Properties Showing Lots which will be sold at Absolute Auction Sale…

Description

An absorbing 1919 auction map of properties in Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula, California, prepared for auctioneers Barry & Austin and the Del Monte Properties Co.

Oriented towards the southwest, this map covers most of the city of Pacific Grove and demarcates each individual lot in the town, with those being sold at auction shaded red. Streets, parks, rail and streetcar lines, open lots (with acreage noted), the auctioneers’ office, and other features are labeled. Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, from which the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium grew, appears at the bottom left. Other recognizable landmarks, such as the Municipal Park at the right (now George Washington Park), are present. The verso includes promotion text, images, and terms of the auction.

The Pacific Improvement Company

The property being sold here had belonged to the Pacific Improvement Company, most of the holdings of which were reformulated the same year of this map’s publication as Del Monte Properties. Formed in 1878 by the “Big Four” California rail barons (Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker), the Pacific Improvement Company can be credited with building Pacific Grove and other communities on the Monterey Peninsula in the late 19th century, becoming one of the largest corporations in the American West in the process. The company had dozens of related subsidiaries, handling utilities, construction, hotels, streetcars (including the line traced in red), and other industries in the growing communities. After the company’s founding members had died by 1889, their descendants wanted to divide its assets. Still, disputes over this process lasted for years until the assets were finally liquidated in the late 1910s, with the largest share (including the Del Monte Forest, Del Monte Lodge, Hotel Del Monte, and properties in Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach, among others) becoming Del Monte Properties.

Census

This promotional map was prepared to promote a Del Monte Properties Co. property auction in November 1919. Nine institutions hold it in the OCLC, and it is sometimes cataloged as “Map of 300 home sites in Pacific Grove.”