This scarce pictorial map was created by Joseph Smith and may have been commissioned by the Highlands Inn just south of Carmel. The Inn, which is advertised at bottom right, was opened by J. Franklin Devendorf in July 1917 prior to the opening of Highway 1. In 1922 it was purchased by Senator and Mrs. Edward H. Tickle and his sister Ella Shaw Fisher, and then passed through several owners until becoming part of the Hyatt Hotel Corporation in 1999.

The map extends from Monterey Bay to Carmel Bay and shows good detail of the roads, scenic sights, and the cities of Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea. There are vignettes surrounding the map of the Royal Presidio Chapel, Mission San Carlos, Pacific Grove Museum, Point Pinos Lighthouse, Colton Hall, and the 1770 landing place of Father Junipero Serra, to whom the map is dedicated. Two cartouches at right give a brief history of the area and traveling distances between Monterey and other locations in California.

Joseph John Smith (1892-1939) was born in Grand Haven, Michigan to immigrant parents from the Netherlands. He moved west after World War I and married Eleanor Wood in Tucson, Arizona in 1920. By 1930 the couple had moved to Carmel, California, where Smith worked as both a piano tuner and an artist. Smith's 1933 map of the Monterey Peninsula was published in two different states - one with the advertisement for the Highlands Inn at bottom right and the second with a vignette of the Monterey Chamber of Commerce instead of the Highlands Inn. It is not currently known which state was issued first. Smith also published a pictorial map of the city of Monterey in 1933. All of Smith's maps are rare, although the Monterey Peninsula map with the Highlands Inn advertisement appears to be less common than the other state of this map.

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Condition: A

A clean and bright example professionally backed in archival tissue with a few minor creases along the edges of the sheet.