The Embarcadero and a Fishing Town
Near Morro Bay, California
The waterfront street that runs along the harbor is called the Embarcadero, a Spanish word meaning a landing or a pier, and it has always been the working heart of Morro Bay. The town's founder built the first wharf here in the eighteen seventies to ship out dairy and ranch goods. But it was fishing that gave the Embarcadero its soul.
Clam digging in the bay began in the early nineteen hundreds, and a commercial abalone fishery grew into a major industry. By the nineteen thirties the docks bustled as fishermen went after albacore tuna, salmon, and sardines. The abalone fishery peaked in the late nineteen fifties, then collapsed.
Overfishing, a disease called withering foot, and the warming waters of El Nino events wrecked the kelp beds, and the last commercial abalone was landed here around nineteen eighty. Even so, Morro Bay remains a genuine commercial fishing port, not a stage set. Boats still tie up along the Embarcadero, and the community has fought to keep local fishing alive through its own quota fund.
Walk the waterfront and you will smell diesel and salt, hear the clank of rigging, and see stacked crab traps. Behind the gift shops and chowder houses is a real harbor that still sends people out to sea for a living.
