Map - Pacific Grove, California (Pacific Grove)

Pacific Grove is a coastal city in Monterey County, California, in the United States. The population at the 2020 census was 15,090. Pacific Grove is located between Point Pinos and Monterey.

Pacific Grove has numerous Victorian-era houses, some of which have been turned into bed-and-breakfast inns. The city is the location of the Point Pinos Lighthouse, the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History and the Asilomar Conference Center. Novelist Robert Louis Stevenson frequented Pacific Grove and wrote of visiting lighthouse-keeper Allen Luce in 1879. Author John Steinbeck resided in Pacific Grove for a number of years. Later, the area was a filming location for A Summer Place starring Sandra Dee, for Roger Spottiswoode's 1989 film Turner & Hooch, and for the TV series Big Little Lies.

Pacific Grove was founded in 1875, when David Jacks sold the land to the Pacific Improvement Company, which donated acreage towards the first West Coast Chautauqua retreat formed by a group of Methodists who modeled the town after Ocean Grove, New Jersey. In time, the butterflies, fragrant pines, and fresh sea air brought others to the Pacific Grove Retreat to rest and meditate. The initial camp meeting of the Pacific Coast branch of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle was held at the Chautauqua Hall in Pacific Grove in June 1879. Modeled after the Methodist Sunday school teachers' training camp established in 1874 at Chautauqua Lake, New York, this location became part of a nationwide educational network.

In November 1879, after the summer campers returned home, Robert Louis Stevenson wandered into the deserted campgrounds: "I have never been in any place so dreamlike. Indeed, it was not so much like a deserted town as like a scene upon the stage by daylight, and with no one on the boards."

The Pacific Grove post office opened in 1886, closed later that year, and was reopened in 1887. Pacific Grove incorporated in 1889.

The El Carmelo Hotel was Pacific Grove's first hotel, opening to guests on May 20, 1887. It was sometimes called the sister of Monterey's Hotel Del Monte. It was located on Lighthouse Avenue between Fountain and Grand avenues and owned by the Pacific Improvement Company (PIC). In 1907, the name changed to the Pacific Grove Hotel. In 1917, the PIC decided to dismantle it and use the wood in the reconstruction of The Lodge at Pebble Beach that had burned down on December 17, 1917. The empty block was sold to W. R. Holman in 1919 to open the Holman Department Store.

Thomas Albert Work built several of the buildings in Pacific Grove, including the three-story Del Mar hotel in 1895, at the corner of Sixteenth, and in 1904 he built a commercial block along Lighthouse Avenue to house local businesses, including the two-story Romanesque-style Bank of Pacific Grove.

Pacific Grove, like Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterey, became an artists' haven in the 1890s and subsequent period. Artists of the En plein air school in both Europe and the United States were seeking an outdoor venue with natural beauty, and Pacific Grove became a magnet for this movement. William Adam was an English painter who first moved to Monterey and then decided on Pacific Grove for his home in 1906. At about the same time, Eugen Neuhaus, a German painter, arrived in Pacific Grove with his new bride. Charles B. Judson was an artist of aristocratic lineage who painted in Pacific Grove over a long time beginning in 1907; Judson's murals decorate the halls of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

The Asilomar Conference Grounds are located at the western edge of Pacific Grove. Asilomar opened in 1913 as a YWCA summer retreat; it now belongs to the California State Park System. Thirteen buildings on these grounds were designed by architect Julia Morgan, who also designed Hearst Castle.

For a number of years, John Steinbeck lived in a cottage in Pacific Grove owned by his father, Ernest, who was Monterey County treasurer. The cottage still stands on a quiet side street at 147 11th Street, without any plaque or special sign, virtually overlooked by most Steinbeck fans. Another Steinbeck-related house is at 222 Central Avenue, which was his grandmother's house. A golden statue of Steinbeck in the front yard stood for years before it was removed. In Steinbeck's book Sweet Thursday, a chapter is dedicated to describing a (probably fictional) rivalry that arose among the town's residents over the game of roque.