Salinas, CA news and local guide

In the 1850s two main stagecoach routes met 18 miles east of Monterey at the big bend of the Alisal Slough. In 1854 American settlers opened a post office there and called the town Salinas, after Rancho Las Salinas, which was named for the salt marshes of the area. The Halfway House inn opened at the junction in 1856. The Salinas River, earlier the Rio de Monterey, was apparently named after the town by an American mapmaker in 1858. The streets were laid out in 1867, and Salinas was incorporated in 1874. The railroad arrived in 1868, and grazing land turned to crops. Farmers grew wheat, barley, potatoes and mustard seed without irrigation. Chinese workers drained thousands of acres of swamp for farmland and did much of the early farm labor, and Salinas had the second-largest Chinatown in California, after San Francisco's. Irrigation later turned the valley to row crops. Sources Wikipedia: Salinas, California