20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY AUGUST 20-26, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com For 30 years, Seavey worked with others to create what is now Salinas Heritage Park, formerly the Intermodal Transit Center, a designation approved by the Salinas City Council in June. It contains the First Mayor’s House, also known as the Harvey Baker House, which was moved from its original location on Romie Lane to the park. It joined other historic buildings on the site tied to the days of the Southern Pacific Railroad, including the Salinas Amtrak Station. The park is also home to the Monterey & Salinas Valley Railroad Museum and the Salinas Welcome Center. The name change was just one more step in making the park a true cultural tourism destination. Back on the Peninsula, Seavey was part of a team that created the Cannery Row Interpretive Project, commissioned by the Cannery Row Company and the Cannery Row Business Improvement District in 2008. Seavey worked with the late Dennis Copeland, a longtime historian and archives manager for the City of Monterey, local historian Tim Thomas and artist John Cerney, who did the murals along the Rec Trail that passes through the Row, including one depicting Mac and the Boys from Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Seavey helped create the three workers’ cabins that can be found off of Cannery Row on a walkway called Bruce Ariss Way. Seavey and the team outfitted each cabin with items that might have been used by workers when the canneries were in operation in the early to mid-20th century. “How do you protect a place like this?” Seavey asks. “Cultural tourism.” Not all history can be saved from bulldozers, a developer’s remodel or a natural disaster. Seavey points to one such loss at Paraiso Springs in South County, a once popular resort. He was active in trying to save the Victorian cabins there. He did get photographs of each one, but when no one was looking the property owner bulldozed them without permits. There was the Cominos Hotel in Salinas, built in the early 1920s in the 100 block of Main Street, it became one of the premier hotels of the Central Coast and an important social hub for the town. It closed in the 1960s and was eventually sold to the city. After it was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, the city tore it down and built the parking garage and what is now One Main Street, home to the National Steinbeck Center. In just the past year, a bit of history was covered up at 601 Lighthouse Ave. in Monterey, after it was renovated and turned into retail space and several condominiums. Seavey wrote up the historic assessment in 2020, reporting that the building, once known as the Labor-Temple, was historically significant as a labor union hall for cannery workers and other local unions from 1941-1953. He called it a good example of the architectural style of Public Works Style Moderne. He recommended that some exterior features of the building be preserved, including the uncovering of the original band across the top with the name of the building, “Labor-Temple.” But the building changed hands in 2022 and the original signage was lost in the remodel. On other buildings along Lighthouse, original names are still preserved, giving a hint as to the neighborhood’s past. It was that hint that Seavey wanted to be saved. “They took off the sign, so now it’s a big, blocky monstrosity,” Seavey says. To actually save the past you have to look to the future, which is why Seavey has been involved in efforts to collect and save important documents and photographs so that Monterey County’s past is preserved for future generations. In 2015, he teamed with historian Richard Janick and others to launch the Monterey Area Architectural Resource Archive to collect, catalog, store and preserve such records as manuscripts, photographs and archival materials pertaining to architectural history of the Monterey area. After the death of Pacific Grove photographer Pat Hathaway at age 72, who had amassed a collection of over 80,000 photographs, his friend Seavey was appointed as administrator of Hathaway’s estate. Besides taking his own photos, Hathaway was fond of dumpster diving, Seavey says, finding old photos thrown away by people who didn’t realize how significant those photos could be. Hathaway had already been in contact with UC Berkeley about taking the collection. “I knew right off the bat that if this went to Cal, it wouldn’t be seen by anybody probably for 100 years,” Seavey says. He chose the Monterey County Historical Society in Salinas to house the archive. Eventually all the photos will be published digitally and made free to the public by the State of California, which, Seavey says, is what Hathaway wanted. “So now the State benefits from Pat’s dumpster diving,” he says. Seavey himself has amassed his own collection of documents, from hundreds of historical assessments and projects he’s worked on, maybe as many as 1,000. His system has been to file them away in manila envelopes. Like Hathaway’s collection, Seavey plans on donating them to the Historical Society. “Those poor bastards are going to have to get them all,” Seavey says with a chuckle. The dining room inside Seavey’s home serves as his office. At 86, he’s still working as a historic preservationist consultant. The First Mayor’s House in Salinas, located in what is now Salinas City Heritage Park, formerly the Intermodal Transit Center. Seavey has worked with others for around 30 years to make the park into a historic asset to draw visitors to the city. “The Amalfi? We’ve got Big Sur along with a bridge that is known internationally. So we’re an incredible tourist draw.” DANIEL DREIFUSS DANIEL DREIFUSS
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