Castroville, CA

Castroville is the crossroads town at the head of Monterey Bay, where the coast highway from Santa Cruz and Monterey meets the road east toward Salinas. It bills itself as the Artichoke Center of the World, and the fields around it make the case. Artichokes first went into this ground in the 1920s, and the region still grows most of the country's supply. A giant concrete artichoke has stood beside the highway for decades, and the Artichoke Festival, which began in 1959, keeps the vegetable in the public eye. Juan Bautista Castro founded the town in 1863, and Castroville has stayed small, with about seven and a half thousand people in a single square mile. Nearly everything runs along Merritt Street, the old commercial strip that now doubles as the stretch drivers cross on their way between the coast and the valley. Beyond it the fields stretch flat in every direction. Travelers pull off the highway for Phil's Fish Market & Eatery at 10700 Merritt Street, which has built up thousands of online reviews for its seafood, and locals line up early at Missing Hole Donut Shop before it closes at noon. Mexican restaurants and bakeries fill out the same blocks, so the street stays busy on ordinary weekdays too. The nearest big outdoor draw is on the water. Moss Landing is a short drive up the coast with its harbor and beaches, and Elkhorn Slough winds inland close by. East of town the Salinas Valley opens out into farmland. Highway 183 runs to Salinas, which is where people go for big-box shopping, and Highway 1 carries traffic south toward the Monterey Peninsula and north toward Santa Cruz. The county's rail extension plans include a Castroville station in a later phase, aimed at commuters heading toward Salinas. Summers are cool and often foggy, so beach-weather afternoons come less often than the coast's reputation suggests. What makes the town stand out is how openly it wears its crop. The vegetable is on the signs, the festival and the statue, and the fields it comes from are in view from almost anywhere in town.