A fresh history of Monterey County gives voice to stories too long ignored.

Two men from Scotland came to Monterey in the 19th century. One stayed the rest of his life and profoundly shaped the area''s economic landscape. The other stayed three months and kept to himself, ill and besotted over a married woman. Which one counts more "historically" to Monterey?

The two men, of course, are David Jacks and Robert Louis Stevenson. Today, the author of Treasure Island, whose impact on Monterey was scant, gets much more local attention than the powerful and ruthless Jacks, who at one time owned a significant portion of what is now Monterey County. Why is this?

"History" is commonly thought of as simply "what happened," but the forces behind historical narratives are considerably more complex, as Carmel Valley author John Walton shows in his lively new study of the Peninsula, Storied Land: Community and Memory in Monterey (University of California Press, $40). Walton takes his readers through the principal stages of Monterey''s history, from the 18th century to the present, in order to show how every generation selectively creates-in essence, "remembers"-a version of its past that will correspond to its present needs and values. In this process, several constituencies, from native Californian tribes to mestizo Californios, squatters to single women, may find that their stories have been silenced.

Walton, who is Professor of Sociology at UC Davis, has scoured local and state records, newspapers, novels, pamphlets and personal correspondence in order to "recover the experiences of these people from their archival obscurity." The result is not only a richer, more complete picture of "what really happened" in Monterey, but a new way of understanding history: as an "interplay of stories and events" that people collectively remember-or choose to forget.

Readers seeking a solid introduction to the people and events, both famous and "obscure," that made Monterey what it is today could scarcely do better than to read Storied Land. What interests Walton most, however, are those crucial transitional periods in which history is not only made but written.

A prime example is the period of the 1930s. For over 50 years, Monterey''s reputation had been linked to the glamorous Hotel Del Monte (which now houses the Naval Postgraduate School). The image Monterey projected then was as a quaint, "historic" watering hole for the rich. When the Depression hit and the hotel foundered, Monterey turned to its growing fishing industry to reinvent itself as the Sardine Capital of the World-though not without considerable resistance from wealthy landowners who were invested in the old image. A 1939 editorial in the Monterey Herald stated succinctly the new perspective: "This Peninsula is one of those rare places on earth, but it is the reality of labor and productivity that saves this place from being one of those baubles whose beauty is at the service of those who neither reap nor sow."

Yet the town and its power structure remained ambivalent about its workers. During that same period the Herald also ran a series titled "Shack of the Month": photos of ramshackle housing that were published in order to publicly humiliate poor owners or tenants, and suggest that their kind was not welcome in Monterey.

Today, Walton writes, a "new history of Monterey is under construction, a broad narrative woven of threads fashioned in commercial development, environmental politics, and heritage preservation." The identity of Cannery Row offers a good example of that new history. While Walton admires Steinbeck''s imaginative genius, he observes that "no one on Steinbeck''s Cannery Row has a regular job, save perhaps for the Chinese storekeeper, whose labors are caricatured as sharp trading."

What is celebrated on Cannery Row today is not so much the actual work performed by actual workers as a fantasy reconstruction, "true to nothing particularly historical, a mythical place that conflates fact with fiction."

Every historian leaves the mark both of his personality and his epoch on the history he or she writes. One early chronicler of California remarked about its native population that "such was [its] inherent stupidity...that no great revolts or outrages have to be chronicled." Walton''s own perspective is refreshingly balanced and fair. He avoids grand polemical statements, remaining true throughout to his mission to incorporate as much previously suppressed or neglected information as possible.

Much about a community can be determined from a thoughtful study of its past, and anyone interested in the communities that make up Monterey County will want to read Walton''s vivid evocation of its history-a history that today is being reshaped by important voices who refuse to let their stories be silenced.

Prof. Walton presents a slide talk on his research on Sunday, Oct. 28 at 3pm at the Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific St. For information call 372-5477.