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Napa Valley, California

Best and Worst of the Napa Valley

Best Things About The Napa Valley

  1. The natural beauty of the valley
  2. Wonderful weather
  3. Outstanding restaurants
  4. Superb wines
  5. The relatively slow pace of small town life
  6. Friendly people
  7. The ease of finding a parking place and the low traffic compared to the rest of the Bay Area
  8. Closeness to San Francisco
  9. County-wide cooperation on important issues
  10. The proximity of both beach and mountains

Worst Things About The Napa Valley

  1. Expensive restaurants
  2. Expensive wines (and the markup on wine in most restaurants)
  3. The traffic on Highway 29
  4. Ugly ego-driven "houses on steroids" on top of hills and ridges
  5. High cost of housing
  6. Low wages
  7. Snobs (See 1, 2 and 4 above)
  8. Box chain stores in the city of Napa
  9. City of Napa's planning, (lack of) design review, and traffic engineering
  10. Wealth disparity and the disappearing middle class

Best Ideas That Actually Happened

  1. Ending Prohibition
  2. Agricultural Preserve. In 1968 Napa Valley vintners and other community leaders enacted the country's first Agricultural Preserve, protecting over 30,000 acres of open space
  3. "Measure A". Vote of the people in 1980. It saved agriculture in the Napa Valley by restricting growth in the unincorporated areas to 1% a year, with 25% of that having to be affordable housing. (The affordable housing never happened, but at least it further restricted the expensive housing)
  4. "Measure J" - Vote of the people in 1990. This further protected agriculture by requiring all currently agricultural-zoned land to be rezoned to non-agricultural use only with the approval of the voters
  5. Flood control on Napa River - Vote of the people in 1998 that approved a bond measure to restore much of the Napa River to its natural state, increase and protect wetlands, prevent frequent flooding of homes and businesses through the valley, and help revitalize the downtown Napa business area.

    6. Of course there's a downside, too. Many small businesses and low-income residents are being displaced, a few property owners will make a lot of money, and the slow and easy character of downtown Napa is likely to be significantly changed. Whether that's for the better remains to be seen.

    In fact, we can't yet tell whether this was a really good idea, a really bad idea, or somewhere in the middle. In the meantime, we'll list it under "Good Ideas", but keep a space open for it under "Best Bad Ideas That Actually Happened."

Worst Ideas That Actually Happened

  1. Stopping passenger train service between Napa and Calistoga in 1929. Long-gone are the days when you could take the train from Calistoga all the way to Napa and then take the ferry to San Francisco
  2. Prohibition
  3. "Redeveloping" downtown Napa by tearing down most of its historical buildings
  4. Allowing Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and other box stores into the valley
  5. Building "trophy homes/homes on steroids" on top of hills and ridges in the valley
  6. Bulldozing thousands of beautiful old valley oaks and replacing them with vineyards

Worst Ideas That Were Fortunately Avoided

  1. Building a freeway on the east side of the Napa Valley. (This one still pops up occasionally.)
  2. Making Highway 29 a four-lane freeway all the way up the valley and into Lake County.
  3. Expanding the city of Napa to a population of 198,000 by the year 2000. (Or 558,000 by 2020.) Fortunately we're only at 72,000, which many feel is bad enough.
  4. Cementing the Napa River in the city of Napa area in order to prevent flooding. This was another brilliant idea from the Army Corps of Engineers, who brought us the now dead Los Angeles River (but whose reputation was saved by their support of the environmentally-focused Napa River project).

Top Misconceptions About The Napa Valley

  1. Mount St. Helena is an extinct volcano. (It's not extinct because it never was a volcano.)
  2. The summit of Mount St. Helena is the highest point in Napa County. (Actually Mount St. Helena's East Peak is the highest point in Napa County. Its summit is in Sonoma County.)
  3. Napa Valley gets more tourists than Disneyland. (Napa Valley gets less than 5 million visitors a year, Disneyland around five times that number. This was a rumor promoted by the local daily newspaper and chamber of commerce.)
  4. Robert Mondavi Winery was the first winery built in the Napa Valley after Prohibition. (The first one was Sunny St. Helena, built in 1933 just before Prohibition ended, and opened after it did. It's now occupied by Merryvale. The first still-operating winery was Stony Hill, built in 1951. Mondavi was the first large winery built after Prohibition, opening in 1967.)

Most Uniquely Napa Valley Things To See And Do

  1. Artesa Winery (Carneros)
  2. Bale Grist Mill Historic State Park (St. Helena)
  3. Beringer Vineyards (St. Helena)
  4. Bothé-Napa Valley State Park (Calistoga)
  5. Bridgeford Flying Services (Napa County Airport)
  6. Buy a good bottle of wine (everywhere)
  7. California State Historical Landmarks (throughout the county)
  8. Veterans Home of California (Yountville)
  9. Calistoga spas (Calistoga)
  10. City of Napa walking tours (Napa)
  11. DiRosa Art Preserve (Carneros)
  12. Downtown Calistoga (Calistoga)
  13. Eating in a good restaurant (everywhere)
  14. French Laundry (Yountville)
  15. Greystone—Culinary Institute of America (St. Helena)
  16. Hot air balloons (Yountville)
  17. Napa Valley Museum (Yountville)
  18. Niebaum-Coppola Winery (Rutherford)
  19. Old Faithful Geyser (Calistoga)
  20. Petrified Forest (Calistoga)
  21. Robert Louis Stevenson State Park (Calistoga)
  22. Robert Mondavi Winery (Oakville)
  23. Scenic drives (throughout the county)
  24. Sharpsteen Museum (Calistoga)
  25. Silverado Museum (Calistoga)
  26. Sterling Vineyards Airtram (Calistoga)
  27. Wine Train (Napa)
  28. Wine-tasting fund raisers (all towns)

Best Things That You Probably Don't Have Back Home

  1. Hot air balloons
  2. Mud baths
  3. The French Laundry
  4. Internationally known wineries
  5. Small towns filled with gourmet restaurants
  6. Vineyards instead of subdivisions
  7. Culinary Institute of America at Greystone
  8. The Wine Train
  9. Napa Valley Opera House
  10. Uptown Theater (once it's open)

Best Broadway Show Set In The Napa Valley

"Most Happy Fella." 1956. Music, lyrics & book by Frank Loesser based on Sidney Howard's "They Knew What They Wanted." Ran for 676 performances. Cast: Robert Weede, Jo Sullivan, Art Lund. Best known song: "Standing on the Corner (Watching All the Girls Go By)."

Buy The Most Happy Fella (1956 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

Best TV Melodrama Set In The Napa Valley

"Falcon Crest." Starring Jane Wyman (first wife of former president Ronald Reagan), and a bunch of others. The winery shown in the series was Spring Mountain Vineyard, which still exists.

Best Books on Napa Valley Politics

Napa: The Story of an American Eden and the more recent The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley. Both books are by James Conaway and both are available at Napa Valley bookstores.

They describe the players and events in the ongoing land-use battles in the Napa Valley. Grapegrowers, vintners, developers, politicians and environmentalists all appear in fascinating detail. Not everyone liked how they were portrayed in the books, but they all read them. We highly recommend both books if you'd like to know the behind-the-scenes story of life in the valley.

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