Seaside, CA

Seaside occupies two adjoining landscapes on the Monterey Peninsula. The older city rises east from Highway 1 around Fremont Boulevard, Broadway Avenue, Del Monte Boulevard, and a small strip of Monterey Bay frontage. Most neighborhood shopping, restaurants, civic buildings, and established housing are in this part of town, with West Broadway serving as the traditional downtown street. A second expanse reaches across former Fort Ord land to the north and east. It contains newer housing, institutional sites, the Bayonet and Black Horse golf courses, and land beside California State University, Monterey Bay and Fort Ord National Monument. The distinction is practical: errands and older commercial corridors lie in the original core, while the former base holds the university, major trail access, and large sites still changing after the Army's departure. The first settlement was itself a real-estate venture.

ATTRDirectorG at en.wikipedia / Public domain

Dr. John Roberts and his uncle bought 160 acres in the late nineteenth century, divided the tract into 1,000 vacation lots, and promoted it as an extension of Monterey's Hotel Del Monte resort setting. Roberts built near present-day Roberts Lake, and a post office fixed the name Seaside by 1891. Fort Ord changed the city's scale and social history. The Army used the adjoining reservation from 1917 until the installation closed in 1994; as many as 1.5 million troops trained there. Seaside incorporated in 1954 while the base was active. Barracks, training ranges, military housing, and service businesses made military life a defining local presence for decades, and the transfer of base property after closure created the large eastern and northern piece of today's city. Laguna Grande Regional Park supplies one of the clearest shared gathering places in the older city.

ATTRBpluke01 / CC BY 4.0

Roughly 80 percent of the 13.33-acre park lies in Seaside, including the lake, canyon, habitat area, walking paths, picnic grounds, and the eastern lawn used for concerts and special events. The setting sits beside residential neighborhoods yet also serves the wider peninsula across the Monterey city line. The 2026 Seaside Farmers' Market runs on the lawn Thursdays from 4 to 8 p.m. with produce, prepared food, Market Match purchases, and music. The 39th annual Sunday Blues in the Park brings five Sunday concerts there from July 12 through August 9. On Thursday, residents can buy vegetables and dinner beside the lake; a few days later, the same lawn becomes the city's long-running blues stage. Education and visitor-serving work now occupy prominent parts of the inherited Fort Ord landscape.

ATTRCreator:Jimmy Panetta / Public domain

California State University, Monterey Bay was founded on former base property in 1994 and held its first classes on August 28, 1995. Its Seaside mailing address and campus activity make the university a major northern destination, with campus land extending toward Marina. In 2025, university activity, Monterey Bay and Central Coast tourism, a regional auto sales-and-service district, golf, lodging, and restaurants shaped Seaside's economy and drew customers from outside the city. The conversion is visible in both work and land use: a military installation became a university campus, public golf courses, housing areas, development sites, and protected terrain. To the east, the national monument preserves 14,658 acres and offers over 86 miles of nonmotorized trails. Grassland, chaparral, and oak woodland now line routes across terrain once used for Army training.