Spreckels, California  Spreckels is a census-designated place (CDP) located in the Salinas Valley of Monterey County, California, United States. Spreckels is located south of Salinas, at an elevation of 62 feet (19 m). The population was 673 at the 2010 census, up from 485 at the 2000 census. Spreckels is one of the best-preserved company towns in the United States. It was built to house workers for the Spreckels Sugar Company plant which operated there from 1899 until 1982, named after its founder "Sugar King" Claus Spreckels. When it opened, the Spreckels plant was the world's largest sugar beet factory, each day consuming 13 million gallons of water (much of it pumped from wells) to process 3000 tons of beets. Spreckels is associated with the writer John Steinbeck, who lived and worked there for a time, and used it as a setting in "Tortilla Flat". Spreckels was used as a location for the 1955 Steinbeck movie "East of Eden". Spreckels is located at . It is about 4 miles south of Salinas, California, on the banks of the Salinas River, approximately two miles from Hill Town, California. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all of it land. This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71.6 °F. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Spreckels has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. The Spreckels post office opened in 1898. The name honors Claus Spreckels, who built a sugar mill at the site. Spreckels is home to two major agricultural employers, Tanimura & Antle, and D'Arrigo Brothers  At the 2010 census Spreckels had a population of 673. The population density was 5,509.4 people per square mile (2,127.2/km²). The racial makeup of Spreckels was 483 (71.8%) White, 0 (0.0%) African American, 13 (1.9%) Native American, 26 (3.9%) Asian, 0 (0.0%) Pacific Islander, 130 (19.3%) from other races, and 21 (3.1%) from two or more races.