Custom House Museum

The Custom House in Monterey is a long, low adobe building with a heavy, weathered shingle roof and a deep porch that runs the entire front of the structure. It served as the port of entry for all goods coming into Mexican California. In eighteen forty-six, Commodore John Drake Sloat sent a party of marines ashore here to raise the American flag. The building held the taxes collected on imports, making it the financial heart of the town before California became a state.