Yountville Napa Valley

Yountville

Napa Valley, California

In 1831, George Yount, the first American settler in the Napa Valley, came to the area now called Yountville. He received an 11,000-acre Mexican Land grant and built the first structures in the area, a Kentucky blockhouse and mill. Even more importantly, he planted the first grapevines in the Napa Valley.

In 1855 Yount hired a surveyor to lay out a town site and named it "Sebastopol", ignoring the fact that a town in neighboring Sonoma County already had that name. In 1865, two years after his death, the town was renamed in his honor. His grave can be found in Pioneer Cemetery, next to Yountville Park at the north end of town.

When Yountville incorporated, it wanted to be called a "village." The State of California didn't allow for villages, so Yountville had to refer to itself as a town. It still feels like a village, with a population of approximately 3,500, which includes 1,100 residents of the Veterans Home of California.

Yountville is a walking town filled with excellent shops, restaurants, and lodging. Spend some time here. You'll enjoy it. Oh, yes, and it does happen to have a whole bunch of really good restaurants.

Getting Here

Most people come to Yountville by car. It's just nine miles north of Napa on Highway 29, which is the main north-south highway in the Napa Valley. It's even a divided freeway as far as Yountville. After that it becomes a two-lane road. The residents of Napa Valley have continuously rejected the idea of a freeway running upvalley.

This map will show you where Yountville is in relation to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area.