45-minute drive reveals state’s growing inequality
California Highway 68 is a very short road, running just 24 miles from the coastal cities of Pacific Grove and Monterey to the inland city of Salinas. In today’s California, the path of inequality is rarely very long.
Californians often talk about the inequality between our regions — north and south, coast and inland. But the greatest inequality in our state lies within our regions, not between them. Just cross the bridge from San Francisco to Richmond. Or take the bus from Sherman Oaks to the northeast San Fernando Valley.
The canyons between such places are as dramatic as our landscapes — and define us as a state. The fact that local inequality is greater than statewide inequality is especially troubling because California is among the most unequal states in America, with the country’s highest poverty rate.
The factors behind this growing inequality — immigration, technology, education, inland migration — are all part of the Highway 68 story.
The divide that 68 spans — between the wealth of the Monterey Bay Peninsula and the poverty of Salinas, the Monterey County seat — is as much about mind-set as economics. To make the 45-minute drive, as I did recently, is to “cross the Lettuce Curtain,” a nod to Salinas’ most famous agricultural product.
I started my own journey at the head of 68, Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds, where rooms were running almost $300 a night. The highway took me first through Pacific Grove, a prosperous village (low unemployment, a median house price north of $700,000, little poverty). I had to turn right to stay on 68 near the gate to 17 Mile Drive, which takes you to world-renowned resorts.
I continued south on 68, where it forms the western boundary of the city of Monterey (with its low unemployment and high incomes). Then I turned northeast, as 68 joined up with Highway 1 for 2 miles, before splitting again near Seaside, not far from where Tesla Motors plans to open a new sales center.
On this long stretch through hills, I passed many developments, including Pasadera (with a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course) and Fort Ord, the former U.S. Army outpost (where my dad served before going to Vietnam).
Closer to Salinas, I passed unincorporated communities, developed in recent decades, with names like San Benancio and Corral de Tierra. Many of their residents are professionals who work in Salinas, but don’t live there. The migration to these developments has been so strong that the Salinas Californian’s features section is called “Off 68.”
Three miles before Salinas, the highway opened up, becoming a freeway. The landscape opened at the same point, with the hills falling away to reveal the Salinas Valley and its fields. It was like descending into a different world.
It’s certainly different from Monterey. Salinas, population 155,000, has many strengths, but it’s a poor place. Salinas is younger, more foreign-born, and less educated (12 percent of residents have bachelor’s degrees) than the rest of the state. There is great potential in Salinas — young people are precious assets in our aging state — but the city has struggled to do right by its children. Youth violence rates and child poverty are among the highest in the entire state.
In Salinas, there is resentment toward the other end of Highway 68. Some ask why Monterey environmentalists don’t fight as hard against pesticides that get into Salinas schools as they do against coastal development. Others complain that Monterey is a magnet for jobs, which relegates Salinas to serving as a place for people who can’t afford to live near their work on the peninsula. You can see this in Highway 68 traffic patterns; the cars back up going into Monterey in the morning, and heading back to Salinas in the late afternoon.
On my own drive, I reached Salinas and followed Highway 68 past Salinas High and through downtown to where it ended at the 101.
There I faced a choice. I could go south on 101 toward small Monterey County communities even poorer than Salinas. Or I could head north, crossing another divide, and arrive an hour later in the Bay Area, the richest megacity in the richest country on earth.