Hartnell College
411 Central Ave., Salinas 1752 E. Alisal St., Salinas (831) 755-6700, hartnell.edu
The Salinas Valley and Monterey County’s hearty agriculture industry owes a debt of gratitude to Hartnell College. For decades, the community college has been producing a well-educated workforce in all areas of agriculture. That workforce is what helped the industry hit the billion-dollar mark in value in the 1980s – not once, but four times. (It’s now valued at more than $4 billion.) It’s thanks to Hartnell that a young former migrant worker named Henry Gonzales – laid off after the Firestone tire plant closing in the early ’80s – got his associate’s degree in agricultural mechanics, transferred to Fresno State, and today is Monterey County’s Agricultural Commissioner.