History – July 2009

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine “History” July 2009.

Poker Buddies For Life
By Louisa Hufstader

A Napa woman has written, and privately printed, a slim volume of social history that opens a window on life in Napa more than 60 years ago. Cecelia Elkington-Setty’s “The Story of the Paesano Poker Club of Napa, California” is a 30-page tribute to a group of Italian-American men who have met for a weekly card game since the early 1940s.

“There wasn’t much to do back then,” says 82-year-old Attilio “Rudy” Bergantini, the youngest of the charter members of the Paesano Poker Club (he was named the club’s “fish reporter and weekend advisor” in the summer of 1942). “There wasn’t television … We got started in cards and we all got addicted to it, and we’re still at it.”

Although some of the original players have passed away, Bergantini and a handful of other members still meet every Thursday for a low-stakes poker game. Along with Bergantini, the club’s surviving members include his 92-year-old uncle Attilio “Tillie” Musante; president and charter member Silvio “Sil” Garaventa, 90; charter member Ranoldo “Babe” Grimoldi, 84; Frank Cances, 79 and 92-year-old Milan “Mo” Ocskay, the sole non-Italian at the table, and a relative newcomer who joined in 1980.

They cherish their weekly game more for the conversation and fellowship than for the play: “We’re not really that competitive,” Bergantini admits. “The cards are just there to keep our hands busy.”

Even in the early days, says Grimoldi, it wasn’t a money game. “It never has been,” he says. “That’s why it’s lasted so long.” The real attraction, Bergantini says, is “the company and the reminiscing, now… fortunately, we’re all together so long, we go back and just about remember all our good times.”

Setty describes some of those good times in her booklet, which she wrote with Bergantini’s help. She paints a nostalgic picture of Alta Heights’ “Little Italy” neighborhood where the friends grew up, the first generation born to Italian-speaking parents who grew their own fruit and vegetables, raised their own poultry and stored barrels of wine in their cellars.

“In the late afternoon up and down their streets, the kids would hear ‘chop-chop-chop’ of dinner being prepared by their mothers, knowing minestrone soup would again start their meal,” she writes. “The parents and many grandparents, some not speaking English, kept alive the Old World traditions and customs as these young men grew up.”

Their shared experiences as Italian Napans are not the only ties that have bound the men in the Paesano Poker Club so closely together for seven decades; they also attended local schools and went on to work at what was the Basalt Rock Company until it was purchased by Kaiser in 1955.

Lorraine Kongsgaard, whose parents owned Basalt, has such warm memories of the men in the Paesano Poker Club that she attended a party in their honor, held earlier this year at the Native Sons Hall in Napa.

Kongsgaard recalls Basalt fondly, not only as a plant, but as a tight-knit community: “You knew everybody and you knew their families,” she says. She attended school with the workers’ children, and her family was often invited to weddings and christenings by Basalt employees.

“It was a big part of my life,” she says. “This little plant in Napa—people don’t realize what went through it.”

“The Story of the Paesano Poker Club of Napa, California” includes historical photographs from the heyday of Basalt and Kaiser, as well as family snapshots, candid photos from past poker games and even class photographs from the 1930s. The booklet may be hard to find—Setty created her spiral-bound tribute out of sheer admiration, with no plan to distribute it—but it deserves its place on Napa’s historical bookshelf.

http://www.napavalleymarketplace.com

History Article – February 2009

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article February 2009.

History Isn’t Always Taught Properly: The Legacy Of Ivy Loeber
By Lauren Coodley and Lauren Ellsworth

The young Ivy Loeber, as many students today, “positively abhorred history,” but she became one of Napa’s finest historians and advocates for history. As Miss Loeber told a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, “It all started when Charles White of Calistoga asked me to serve as chairman of a research committee in Napa County for the state centennial celebration in 1945.” Finding a new passion at the age of 65, she would profoundly impact how Napa perceived and maintained its history. In l948, she was a founding member of the Napa County Historical Society, begun with eighteen citizens at the Plaza Hotel in l948. As part of a pioneer picnic at the Old Bale Mill in May of l948, she helped conceive the Napa County Historical Society, which was incorporated a few days later at the Plaza Hotel in Napa.
It was Ivy Loeber’s work ethic and vision for what history could mean for everyday people that inspired her fellow citizens. Editor of the Register Ross Game wrote:

You have brought so much leadership and enjoyment to so many people through the years, and you have made history a living thing for so many, that any contact anyone has been fortunate enough to have with you, will long be remembered.

When Loeber entered the field of local history, it may have been with memories of her own youth and how disinterested she was in history—despite the fact that her own connection to Napa was so rich. Her assessment of why young people aren’t interested in history has a special resonance: “As I see it- -history isn’t always taught properly in the classroom. There should be more emphasis on local history, on the romance of the past that’s closest to home.”

Loeber’s grandfather, Calvin Griffith, arrived in the Napa Valley in 1845, when it was still Mexican territory. Like most local men, he left town during the Gold Rush Days and, as Miss Loeber put it, returned “when he realized he could get more gold out of his farm than from the hills.” While her mother grew up in Napa, her father came to Napa from Baltimore. They married and started a family. Ivy was born in l880. At age fifteen, Ivy moved with her family back to Baltimore: She told interviewer Jerry Cornell: “My father said he was raising three tomboys and he had to take them East so that they could become ladies.” In the Nineteenth Century, “ladies” were distinguished from other women by their purity, piety, and domesticity.

From the time she was 16, Ivy Loeber taught Sunday school, resulting in 23 godchildren—“all ages, colors, and sexes.” There is much to be learned about Loeber’s life before her return to Napa County. During World War II, she presided over the Women’s Improvement Club and worked for the Red Cross. She also chaired the Well Baby Conference and quietly helped the poor to get access to used clothing.

After the founding of the Historical Society, Ivy Loeber spoke about California history all over the state; in San Diego, Los Angeles, Fresno, Shasta, and Sutter counties. As she told Jerry Cornell, “My job is to stimulate an interest in area history so that our youth will appreciate their heritage and understand its connection and influence with the present and future.”
The Solano County Historical Society began “when an organizational meeting under the direction of Miss Ivy Loeber of St. Helena, president of the Napa County Historical Society and a regional vice president of the Conference of California Societies, was held at the old County Library in Fairfield.” Eventually, Loeber was also involved in the Conference of California Historical Societies, served as state chairman of history and landmarks for the California Federated Women’s Clubs and, finally, played a major role in the Bale Mill’s preservation and success as a historic site, which was achieved in l972.

The park, the site of a water-powered grist mill that was built in 1846, was once the center of social activity as Napa Valley settlers gathered to have their corn and wheat ground into meal or flour. The owner of the mill, Dr. Edward Turner Bale, had received the property in a land grant from the Mexican government and lived near the site until his death in 1849.  The slow turning of the old grindstones and the dampness of the mill’s site gave the meal a special quality for making cornbread, shortening bread and spoon bread. According to the California State Parks website: “As old timers put it, “When meal comes to you that way, like the heated underside of a settin’ hen, it bakes bread that makes city bread taste like cardboard.”  Undoubtedly, the taste of that bread helped inspire Ivy Loeber’s crusade on behalf of local history.

Bibliography

“Ivy Loeber, Historian” Positive Living, Spring 1998.

“Ivy Loeber—First Lady of St. Helena” An Interview. St. Helena Star, n.d.

Cornell, Jerry. “In The Spotlight: Ivy Loeber’s Name Synonymous With Napa Valley Historical Studies” Napa Register. Aug 5, 1959.

“Valley History Her Specialty” Napa Register, 1968.

Game, Ross. “An Open Letter To Miss Ivy Loeber” Napa Register. Dec 5, 1968.

“Descendant of Napa Pioneers is Historical Chairman for CFWC” Sacramento Bee. Jan 30, 1961.

Loeber, Ivy:

With Ralph Cross and Anne Roller Isler, Anne Roller, Biographical Sketch of Mary Frances Lawley Patten: Lake Berryessa

Loeber, Ivy, Report of Trip to Identify the Battlefield of Soscol Indians and White in l836, l962

History of St. Helena: A century of progress: Napa County Historical Association, 1955

With Jess Doud, “The Good Old Days,” St Helena Star 1967-1974

The Legend of Spanish Mustard

“May I tell you a story? A true story ~ the story of the beautiful Spanish mustard, a golden carpet of which now practically covers the floor of Napa Valley; but not only of Napa Valley ~ all of the valleys of California that were visited by the early Spanish Padres. “This is the story of our early California when it was only a wilderness, with great quantities of trees, beautiful plains, all kinds of wild animals and birds; many, many Indians, and no white men at all.

“Father Serra had come from Spain to Mexico to spread the religion of Jesus Christ, and hearing about this beautiful, vast country to the north, decided to explore it. With a few faithful followers and Indian guides, he traveled north through what is now our glorious and loved California. As he traveled he scattered to the right, and to the left, the mustard seeds which he had brought with him from Spain.

“The following year, as they returned south they followed ‘a ribbon of gold;’ and following that path again Father Serra established his ‘Rosary of Missions,’ beginning in San Diego and ending in Sonoma.

“So wherever you see the Spanish mustard in California you know the Spanish fathers visited there. This is the early California legend as told to me by my Grandfather, whose father told it to him.”

Provided by the Napa County Historical Society, as told to Ivy May Loeber by her grandfather, Calvin Chesterfield Griffith, Napa County pioneer, and authenticated by Edwin Markhom.

http://www.napavalleymarketplace.com

History Article – September 2008

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article September 2008.

Searching For Peggy Connolly
By Lauren Coodley

The Connolly Ranch is quietly and effectively offering us a last sensory impression of rural life in a rapidly subdividing Napa. The lowing of its cows, the murmurs of its chickens, the bleating of its baby goats, graces Browns Valley with the, sounds– and scents!– of a bygone era. I’ve been curious for years as to how it got saved as a public resource by its last occupant, Peggy Connolly. Harold Kelly, local environmental advocate, told me:

“Her family owned the ranch. Her dad bought it. I knew Helen, older sister, and Peggy, the last remaining sister. They visited the ranch regularly as children and young adults; it was their summer place. Sometime in Sixties, the sisters moved fulltime to the ranch. I was active in the Browns Valley Area; Helen got involved with the neighborhood association. Her sister Peggy was supportive of things we were working on, sent a small donation. Along with me, they were among the original signers of Measure J. When I got to know Peggy Connolly, I enjoyed listening to her as she spoke of how much pleasure she got from watching children feed her animals. She told me she would like to see children continue to learn about farm life, and left her property to The Land Trust telling me, ‘Do what is right.’ She died a few months later.”

The last article about Connolly Ranch was published in 2004, and it refers to Marilyn Warnock, family friend. When I called Marilyn in Rio Vista, she told me that Peggy had attended Cal Berkeley with her mother and aunt. Peggy, a juvenile probation officer, and Helen, a court reporter, grew up in San Francisco, where their father was a pharmacist. As adults, the sisters lived in a Telegraph Hill apartment. After their retirements, they moved to the ranch.

When Marilyn and her sister Lorie’s parents moved to the Veterans home, they visited the Connolly sisters frequently; Marilyn kept the family horse, Cookie, at the farm. She also remembers: “a sweet little dog named Miss Mitzie, who ruled the roost… the fantastic library and wonderful old furniture, and lots of potlucks, sitting under the oak tree.”

Lorie Saxon, Marilyn’s sister, told me:
“When I was in college, I spent time up at the ranch, taking a semester off from Cal. Peggy and Helen were very special and unusual people. You knew that after knowing them for five minutes. I remember them as being unusually intelligent women, something I was always looking for. Always a step or two ahead, Peggy looked like an Irish colleen, with a lovely smile.”

I asked her to describe a typical day at the Ranch. Saxon describes it this way:
“I always thought of it as the Chisholm Trail, going up to the house. They wore pants and sweaters and housedresses and, if it was a hot day, they offered iced tea or iced coffee. Then they broke out highballs on the porch. They had donkeys and cats. They were very, very opinionated and had wonderful senses of humor. They would be so happy to know that someone appreciated them.”

Marilyn and Lorie’s brother, Roger Andrews, wrote:
“Peggy and Helen, our ‘bogus aunts’ as they often called themselves, probably left many friends and admirers but likely no real enemies, and precious few of any of them are still alive. Peggy and Helen were, in some ways, larger than life figures. They were smart – maybe brilliant. They were plain-spoken, no-nonsense women who could – and did – take on anyone who crossed them. With their brother and father, and those who worked for them occasionally at the ranch, I recall them as caring and compassionate. With just about everyone else (us included), they were a bit rough and tumble, none too careful about their language, yet always ready for a good laugh, and always good hearted with a strong sense of fairness.”

Peggy Connolly died in l99l. The enormous oak tree–which Lorie Saxon describes as the “biggest I’ve ever seen in my life–was struck by lightning in the late Nineties. I’ve been walking my dog outside the ranch for the last six years, listening at dusk for the sounds of the geese and the chickens, imagining this land back before the traffic. Lately, I’ve been watching my grandson and hundreds of other children excitedly jostle to feed the sheep and the goats. For these children, who will probably never get to live on a farm, Peggy and Helen’s is a living legacy, an act of great love for the future children, in a world they would never see.

My thanks to Carolyn Fruchtenicht, Harold Kelly, Marilyn Warnock, Lori Saxon, and Roger Andrews for their assistance in restoring the Connollys to us. I hope to share some of their photographs, and other memories from readers, in a future article.

http://www.napavalleymarketplace.com

History Article July 2008

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article July 2008.

“A Calm and steady presence:”
Dr. Olive Jack
By Lauren Coodley

“Humble by nature, a consensus builder by choice and dedicated to making a difference, Dr. Jack has established a standard of community service reserved for legends that few will ever match…Dr. Jack’s extraordinary focus and knowledge has helped shape the plans and policies that have guided the development and significant expansion of the aging services network in both Napa and Solano Counties. Her work has directly benefited untold thousands seniors over the past twenty years. In a very real sense, her contribution to the community, particularly on behalf of the weak and frail among us, is simply beyond calculation. She has been a calm and steady presence whose work and compassion over the years has touched everyone in the aging services network.”

Those were the words of Linda Baker, chair of the Board of Directors of the Area Agency on Aging, at an event at the Olive Tree Restaurant in 200l to honor Dr. Olive Jack. I finally met this renowned Napa personage at Piners Convalescent Hospital, where she is currently living.

Born in l9l5 in Nebraska, Olive M. Jack attended the University of Nebraska during the Great Depression of the Thirties. She wasn’t financially able to go to medical school so, instead, she trained as a medical technician. When World War II began, she was recruited to be a medical tech for the U.S. Army and travelled to different military camps. After leaving the Army, she found a job at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, where her boss encouraged her to go to medical school: “If you don’t get into the top third of the students, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Beginning in the 19th century, the required educational preparation for the practice of medicine increased. This tended to prevent many young American women from entering the medical profession, especially if they were married and had a family. Although home nursing was considered a proper female occupation, nursing in hospitals was performed almost exclusively by men. The American Medical Association, founded in 1846, barred women from membership. No state fully admitted women until l870. By the 1910s, however, women were attending many leading medical schools and in 1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members.

Thirty-two years later, in l947 when Olive Jack finally entered medical school, women were restricted to ten percent of the students. Olive Jack completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at San Francisco Children’s Hospital in l952. During Dr. Jack’s San Francisco residency, her mother moved to Napa; soon after, Dr. Jack followed. She fondly remembers Napa, then a town of 13,000 people: “It was easy to get around…people were friendly and easy to get to know.” When Dr. Jack was first looking for an office, she would always ask if there were objections to her as a woman doctor. She remembers hearing none.

She lived downtown, close to her pediatric office, and later moved across the street from the newly built Queen of the Valley Hospital. The first physician she shared a practice was Dr. Herbert Waechtler, with whom she maintained a long partnership and warm friendship. Paula Amen Schmitt remembers him saying: “The thing that is so hard about having such a busy practice is that I don’t have enough time to go to the rest homes to visit my seniors as often as I want to.”

In l969, Dr. Jack retired from private practice and began running the county’s outpatient clinic and child health conference. In 1970 she became the physician for the Napa schools. (The first woman physician in the Napa school system was Dr. Ethel Priest who, in l947, established a school health program and became a physician for the junior college and high school football teams). Dr. Jack served as the Director of Health Services for Napa County from 1974 to 1979, during which time she was also the Director of Mental Health and the county’s Drug Program.

Remarkably, Dr. Jack recognized that the newly developing field of geriatric medicine was as significant as pediatrics. In the Eighties, along with Jack Cunningham, Dr. Jack helped found the Solano/Napa Agency on Aging. In 1982 she was on the original board of directors of Napa Senior Day Services “Primetime.” Social worker, Michael Vurek, remembers working with her in the program:

“My deepest sense of her was her willingness to do the hard, unrecognized tasks of creating and sustaining a community-based organization. We worked shoulder to shoulder, but I was always paid, and she was a volunteer. She was, for me, a role model of how to roll up your sleeves and do a piece of the work when something needs to be done. There were no fancy titles or great prestige… I deeply respect and admire her.”

In l990, Soroptomist International of Napa Sunrise presented Dr. Jack with the Women Helping Women award for her service to the Napa community. She accepted the honor at a breakfast event during Women’s History Month. Dr. Jack continued to serve on multiple boards, as that “steady presence on behalf of the weak and frail.” On July l2, 200l, Congressmen Mike Thompson entered these remarks into the Congressional Record:

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dr. Olive Jack’s tremendous commitment to the health and wellbeing of the citizens of the Napa community. We can all look to Dr. Jack as a true role model for serving the public selflessly and tirelessly.”

Having taught classes in human development at the community college for decades, I am impressed by the range of Dr. Jack’s contributions to children and elders in this region, and wish to thank her for her recent gracious interview, conducted in her room at Piner’s. Thanks also to Lauren Ellsworth for her research and editing assistance on this essay. Further information on the history of pioneering women physicians like Olive Jack can be found at www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/171.html:

Beginning in 1970, when just under 8% of US physicians were women, the percentage of female physicians began to steadily increase- to nearly 12% in 1980 and 17% in 1990.In the 21st century, the number of women physicians continued to rise; 25.2% of US physicians were female by 2002.

Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine by Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Oxford University Press, l985.
Congressional Record, July 12, 200l
From The Last Adventure by Joyce Maxtone Graham, 1901-1953

You think yourselves the adventurous ones, you young ones,
And us becalmed, torpid, our days uneventful,
Our blood stagnant, our minds’ antennae blunted:
But I, who was young and now am old, can tell you
There is no adventure like the adventure of age.

Lauren Coodley has recently released, with Paula Amen Schmitt, a revised second edition of Napa: the Transformation of an American Town (Arcadia Publishing).

http://www.napavalleymarketplace.com

Local History – June 2008

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article June 2008.

Retracing Juliana’s Path
By Lauren Coodley

Who was Juliana Pope? Pope Valley’s first female settler was born Maria Juliana Salazar in Taos, New Mexico, in l8l0. We know nothing of her childhood—but just 34 years earlier, the Declaration of Independence was written on America’s eastern coast, while Franciscan friars Dominguez and Escalante explored routes from New Mexico to California. Seventeen years before her birth, the first school text was printed in New Mexico by Padre Antonio Jose Martinez of Taos. Three years before her birth, Zebulon Pike led the first Anglo American expedition into New Mexico. Upon his return to the United States, he published a detailed report on the culture of the people of New Spain, its natural resources, population, and military arrangements. It was the first adequate report on the Spanish provinces of North America ever brought back to the United States.

The only way we know about Juliana is through public records of births and marriages. She was married many times. Her second husband was Jose M. Rodriguez, with whom she had two children, Maria and Jose, born in l83l and l833. Juliana was a widow in l834, when she met Julian Pope. Pope had left Kentucky at the age of l7 to hunt and trade in the Mexican territory which would become “New Mexico.” In l827 he joined George Yount’s trapping expedition. But, in l830 the Mexican government, perhaps sensing that their land might be at risk, restricted trapping by non-Mexicans. So Pope set about becoming a Mexican citizen. He joined the Catholic Church and changed his name from William to Julian. He invested in the trade of woolen blankets for California mules that passed between New Mexico and California.

Julian Pope and Juliana Rodriguez were married at San Geronimo de Taos. In l835, they joined a trading caravan and moved to Los Angeles, where Juliana gave birth to two daughters, Luciana and Isabella. In l838, Julian Pope received a parcel of land east of the city in the area later known as Boyle Heights, where he built a house and planted seeds. The next year, he erected a grist mill on a bank of the Los Angeles River below the road leading to the San Gabriel mission.

Hearing of the vast land grants awarded by General Vallejo in northern California, Julian joined an expedition to the Napa Valley in l84l. Along with friends that included Cyrus Alexander, William Knight and William Gordon, he crossed the Carquinez Strait in a rowboat. They hired indigenous residents known as “Indians” to pilot them up the Napa River.

After making base camp at Yount’s home, in the area that would eventually be called Yountville, the four split up, each claiming a valley for his own. Pope petitioned General Vallejo and Manuel Casarin, the acting governor of California, for a parcel on the east side of Howell Mountain. It was almost 9000 acres, and cost him twenty-five cents. Pope named his grant “Rancho Locoallomi.” Juliana and the four children moved from Los Angeles and stayed at Yount’s ranch while her husband built their first home on his new property. The Mexican government paid for their moving expenses, needing the help of settlers in subduing the indigenous tribes

Scholar Linda Heidenreich writes:
With the arrival of Spanish colonizers and, later, Mexican settlers in the region, Napa’s history did not deviate from the history of what is now Greater Mexico/the U.S. West, but rather was reflective of it. Napa, then, is a location where larger trends throughout Greater Mexico can be studied in detail, not only in the ways in which different waves of immigration changed the region, but also in the ways in which the different histories that people constructed continue to influence a particular place. In Napa, Indigenous histories, California/ Euro-American histories, and Chinese and Mexican immigrant histories co-exist. At times they overlap and/or conflict with each other. But they always co-exist.

Juliana gave birth to her fifth child, Delavina, in l842. In 1843, the family moved wagons and livestock from Yount’s ranch to their adobe house, using ropes to ease the wagons down the steep trail. But later that year, Julian was trying to complete a wooden house before winter, and accidentally cut himself in the leg when his ax slipped. According to one story, he was carried to Sonoma for medical attention. Twelve days later, at the age of 38, he died.

Juliana was now 33 years old. The following spring, she married her nearest neighbor, Elias Barnett, a Missouri pioneer. According to Lin Weber, after meeting George Yount, Barnett “gave up whatever plans he may have had for returning to his wife and children in Missouri.” Weber says that he “squatted” near Juliana Pope’s house and “became the new patriarch of Pope Valley.” Barnett brought the first fruit tree seedlings from Missouri to Calistoga in l848.

Juliana herself took legal possession of Pope’s land in l845 by meeting the Mexican civil authorities with “three knowledgeable witnesses:” her husband Barnett, Florencio Salazar, and Joseph Chiles. Her surveyor was Juan Solis. Solis joined with George Yount, who was acting as surveyor for the mayor of Sonoma, and together they measured the boundaries of the property. At each of the four corners of the property, it is said that Juliana pulled up stones and grass and threw them to the four winds to manifest her possession of the land.

Californianas like Juliana ran the ranchos while the men were away. They were trained in horseback riding and in the use of small arms to protect themselves. Like all women in the l9th century, they were pregnant most of their adult lives. Juliana had six more children with Barnett, including two sets of twins in l845 and l854. By then she had borne eleven children.

The Barnett family also adopted three Indian children. Disease had decimated the native population during the l830s when the first group of trappers came from the Northwest, bringing smallpox. Salvador Vallejo estimated that 60,000 people died in Sonoma alone. George Yount, who had never learned to read or write, told an interviewer: “After burning the bodies of their friends in heaps of hundreds, in despair the living fled to the mountains and wandered desolate and forlorn.” Lin Weber notes that the indigenous population that camped near Edward Bale’s mill “gradually diminished and disappeared altogether by about l885.”

In l850, California was admitted to the Union; four years later, Juliana Pope Barnett sold half of the land and “l00 head of cattle, l5 mares and 9 colts” to her eldest son Jose, for $8000. She sold the other half of the land to her other five children for $5000. According to the Society of California Pioneers, Elias Barnett died February 8, 1880 in Pope Valley. Further research might illuminate how and why Juliana and her husband were able to separate in an era in which divorces were rare. Perhaps she sold her land to finance her relocation.

We don’t know where Juliana lived for the next six years. Her granddaughters reported that she painted nudes, which hung in the bars of San Francisco during the Gold Rush. By l860, the U.S. Census records Juliana as a “female farmer” living in San Bernardino with her daughter Isabella Pope; her son Jose lived next door. Twenty years later, she is listed in the census as living with daughter Luciana in Las Cruces, New Mexico. There she died in l900, at 90 years of age. None of her paintings are known to have survived, nor did she leave any written accounts of her life. Therefore, we can only mourn the absence of a more complete record, and be grateful for those who have attempted to retrace her path.

Timeline of New Mexican history:
www.ppsa.com/magazine/nmtimeline.html
Lin Weber, Old Napa Valley (Wine Ventures Publishing), l998.
Yount, George. George C. Yount and His Chronicles of the West: Comprising Extracats from the Memoirs and from the Orange Clark Narrative (Old West Publishing), l996.
Linda Heidenreich, “This Land was Mexican Once:” Histories of Resistance from Northern California (University of Texas), 2007
Harvey L Jones and Janice T. Driesbach, www.museumca.org/goldrush/art-intro.html, note that:
Images of the Gold Rush were created almost exclusively by men of European descent… Only a small percentage of the paintings, watercolors and drawings created during this remarkable time survive today. Fires that swept through early Sacramento and San Francisco (including the devastating blaze following the 1906 earthquake) destroyed many artworks; others were lost to various natural calamities or to carelessness.
Special thanks to Tucker Catlin, who compiled much of the research on Juliana Pope, based on the research of Joe Collizo of Pope Valley.

http://www.napavalleymarketplace.com

Local History – March 2008

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article March 2008.

Time Passing in Napa, 1
By Lauren Coodley

One way to pour time through the hourglass of our lives is to read about Napa as it once was. Louis Ezettie, Realtor and journalist, wrote several columns in l96l that take us back to the past. If we listen to Napa’s elders today, we can glean much from their memories. This essay will intersperse Ezettie’s recollections with the remarks of the Merry Mariners group at the First Presbyterian Church.

.……Sunday afternoon and a great crowd of baseball fans pours out to watch the great rivals, Napa and Vallejo, whose lineup included the mighty Ping Bodie for Vallejo, and the slugging Lloyd Russell for Napa engaged in another thrilling contest. The bloomer girls baseball team making a cross-country barnstorming trip and annually meeting a local men’s aggregation. …Employees at California Glove Company making up two baseball teams called the Giants, captained by Bill Simpkins and Midgets, led by Archie Jacobsen, and meeting in the friendly combat as other employees formed rooting sections to cheer their favorite side.

We grew up digging up arrowheads out on Old Soda Springs Road. There must have been a large Indian population here…My family even remembered hearing about a powwow in l9l0.

Customers having dinner at Kunzel’s Restaurant on the east side of Main Street near First, where a meal consisting of pearl barley soup, roast beef and potatoes, coffee, and homemade pie cost 25 cents, cooked on a woodstove. …School children buying lunch put up in a bag for them at Levi Chapman’s grocery, southeast corner First and Brown Streets, with the lunch items including chipped beef, cheese crackers, fig bars, and some kind of fruit, for l5 cents. People waiting in line at Mason Bakery, southwest corner of Brown and Fourth Streets to buy hot bread just out of the ovens at three loaves for 25 cents and, if you found a five dollar gold piece in your bread, it was not there by accident, as the owner put four or five gold pieces in different loaves to promote sales; and at Regli Brothers Bakery (Napa City Bakery) they gave 20 tickets for $l, each ticket good for one loaf as an inducement to the hotel and restaurant trade.

We walked our cattle from Sonoma to Napa, and grazed them on the river behind what is now the Elks Club. Children would take turns watching the cattle.

……Professor HL Gunn, head of the local business college, whose penmanship with its elaborate flourishes and delicate shading was a work of art. …The big bell in the courthouse tower ringing out an alarm in the still of the night, and you consult your handy alarm location card distributed by and with the compliments of AH Smith insurance company, and if it’s a downtown number, you might jump on your bicycle and hurry to the scene.

Old town used to have a lot of boardinghouses… Do you know why there are Cupolas on downtown houses? They were “widow’s walks,” where wives watched for ships coming up the River after being out at sea.

The big, fruit cannery on 4th street opposite the SP Depot burned to the ground, throwing many people out of work, and was never to be rebuilt. The Chinese vegetable garden and watermelon patch on Soscol Avenue, back of where the Gasser Motor Plant stands, was often raided by kids living on the west side of the river, who would swim across, snatch melons, and then push them across the surface of the water as they made it back to shore.

There were skating rinks all over town, at what used to be Veterans Park, on the top floor of the Hatt Building, and on Silverado Trail by Juarez. We all used to go to Partrick’s afterwards.

.…. The first talking motion picture shown in Napa was presented at the movie theatre located on the east side of Main Street between 3rd and 2nd streets, and Eddie Cantor was the featured actor. …Julio Banchero, talented accordionist and expert billiardist, attracting music and dance lovers to Armory Hall (Migliavacca Building) and winning himself a long engagement as a solo accordionist on the Orpheum Pantages west coast vaudeville circuit. James J. Jeffries, World’s Heavyweight Champion, spending several days in town when he came here to take a small part in the cast of a show headed by Bert Lytel and Evelyn Vaughn at the old Opera House. Tom Sullivan, a local vocalist, probably setting a record for the number of encores ever accorded a performer on a Napa stage, singing for the first time the very sentimental song entitled, “Honeyboy, I Hate to See You Leaving.”

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
(Jim Croce, 1971)

Louis Ezettie articles published in June and September, l96l, courtesy of the Napa County Historical Society. On Sunday, March 2, Richard Aldrich will present a History of the Napa Valley Opera House at the Goodman Library Building, 1219 First Street,
2:30 p.m. Free.

For an article by Louis Ezettie about the founding of Partrick’s, see: http://www.napahistory.com/partrick.htm
For a fascinating account of the Lokoya women’s volunteer firefighters by Louis Ezettie, see http://www.drycreek.org/reprints/past_and_present75.html

Many thanks to the Merry Mariners for
sharing their observations with me on February l6, 2008.

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History Article – December 2007

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article December 2007.

Counting Cars
By Lauren Coodley

Napan Judy Lloyd wrote me a letter in response to my October Marketplace article. Her experience forms the basis for this essay. Lloyd writes:

I was born and raised in Napa, as was my mother, whose maiden name was Bergantini. The Bergantinis came to Napa from Genoa, Italy, and lived in the Italian community in Alta Heights district. In fact, I live in the house my mother grew up in, on Silverado Trail between Berna and Spring streets. When I first moved here twenty years ago I had a great view of the Napa Garbage company – as well as a great stench carried on the evening breezes.

What was once a quiet country road is now a traffic-packed highway. My mother used to sit on the front porch and count cars; she tells me maybe five or six would go by. When my youngest son was a toddler, we continued the tradition of counting cars – and 60 or more vehicles would pass by during our short time on the porch. My mother loves to tell stories about growing up on the Trail. Her grandmother lived just north of Spring, on the Trail, and my mother would run across the field to visit her. We never got tired of hearing about all the Italian families like the Grimoldis, Bacigalupis, Rossis, and Paniaguas, whose children grew up with her in Alta Heights.

Your article hit home for me as my husband and I contemplate what will happen when the new proposed Ritz Carlton goes up. I feel like that little house in Virginia Lee Burton’s children’s book, The Little House. Businesses will eventually be surrounding us and the traffic will be horrendous. Of course, as a union electrician, my husband loves the growth, which creates more work.

Now regarding Pear Tree Lane, I can’t help but reminisce every time I drive by the new development. I grew up just east of Beard Road, and my girlfriends and I would ride our bikes down Pear Tree Lane almost every day. It was a dirt road ending in a dead end where the orchard was. We picked pears and played in the orchard. As a young teen I would go down there to sneak a smoke – something I am glad I never continued past the experimental period. There was also a creek that ran south of Pear Tree where we would swing on willow tree branches. What lovely memories I have, memories I love to share.

A few years ago I began to hate Napa. I was discouraged that I would never be able to afford to purchase a home in the town I was born and raised. I was tired of sharing the roads with tourists who didn’t know where they were going. I despised the little expensive shops that were built solely to attract such tourists. Who cares about all that wine stuff anyway? Then a miracle happened.

I was hired to work at Stags’ Leap Winery. How did I not know this amazing property even existed. Gazing across vineyards green with the new spring, I drove through the small gate and into heaven. It was then I thought I was home. I fell in love with Stags’ Leap; its people, the property, the haunted Manor House and quaint old cottages; the wine. Oh yes, now I get the whole wine thing, but most of all I fell in love with the Napa Valley.

Looking online, I found the following history of Stags’ Leap:

Just seven miles north of Napa, in a valley within a valley, lies the century-old, 240-acre wine estate known as Stags’ Leap. Little has changed here since 1893, the year the winery was founded by Horace Chase and his wife Minnie Mizner Chase, the daughter of a prominent San Franciscan who was a U.S. Senator and Ambassador to Central America.

The property was named “Stags’ Leap” after an old Indian legend of a stag leaping across crags of the palisades (bordering the east side of the estate) to escape hunters. In addition to the old stone winery, the Chases built a gracious manor and guest house that still stand, excavated the first wine storage caves on the east side of Napa Valley and installed what is thought to be the first in-ground fresh water swimming pool in Northern California. Stags’ Leap became a center of social life, attracting the era’s most prominent politicians, artists and writers. Friends making a journey from San Francisco crossed the Bay by ferry to Vallejo, boarded a train to Yountville, and made the last leg of their journey to Stags’ Leap in horse-drawn carriages.

Perhaps it is the power of the land itself; perhaps only providence. For whatever reason, those who have owned the Stags’ Leap estate have taken it upon themselves to be stewards, committed to maintaining the rich natural heritage of this charmed valley. Most remarkable among these individuals was Mrs. Frances Grange, who acquired Stags’Leap from Horace Chase in 1913. She carefully transformed the property into a working ranch and the Napa Valley’s preeminent resort. Stags’ Leap soon became a refuge for San Franciscans escaping the cold July fog, and by film stars dogged by press and fans. By day they sequestered themselves in the good care of Mrs. Grange and her staff; lounging, hiking and splashing in one of the state’s first “swimming tanks.”

Twenty years ago, I cut out an article by novelist Anne Tyler about The Little House mentioned by Lloyd:

Like a child, the Little House has its periods of restlessness. And like a child, it finds even longed-for changes both exciting and saddening. Alone at night in the city that has always seemed to beckon, “she missed the field of daisies and the apple trees dancing in the moonlight.”

When I see those words now (and when I hear them, murmuring across the decades in my mother’s voice), I recall the feeling of elderly sorrow that came over me at age 4. At age 4, listening to The Little House, I had a sudden spell of… wisdom, I guess you could say. It seemed I’d been presented with a snapshot that showed me how the world worked: how the years flowed by and people altered and nothing could ever stay the same. Then the snapshot was taken away. Everything there is to know about time was revealed in that snapshot, and I can almost name it. I very nearly have it in my grasp… but then it’s gone again, and all that’s left is a ragged green book with the binding fallen apart.

Judy Lloyd finished her letter to me with this:

Next year, I turn 50. I still can’t afford a house but that’s okay for now. I will continue to live in the family home on the Trail where I will sit on the porch and count the cars. I will follow behind the tipsy tourists on my way home from work and pray for their safe trip home. I will continue to enjoy the fruits of our labor here at the winery, the history, and ghost stories. I will continue to remember Pear Tree Lane and the little grimy girls who played in the orchard.

Sources:
www.stagsleapwinery.com/history/index
Anne Tyler, New York Times, “Why I Still Treasure The Little House,” November 9, 1986.

Correspondence from Judy Lloyd to Lauren Coodley, October 2007.

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History Article – November 2007

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article November 2007.

Remembering Napa State Hospital from 1948
By Kathleen Dreessen

Jackie Hoyle is 81. She retired at the age of 50 after working for almost 30 years at Napa State Hospital. Jackie shares her memories of the many years she worked there.

“I came to Napa when I was 20 years old because my dad worked at Mare Island,” says Hoyle. “In 1948 I married Robert Hoyle. My husband was in the Navy at sea, so I lived with my parents.”

In 1948, First Class postage was three cents (Air Mail was five cents), popular movies included The Red Shoes, Road to Rio and Easter Parade, Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman,” President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan and only one in 10 Americans had seen a television set.

“At the time, I was working at Parks Victory Hospital, but I heard that you got paid $50 more at the State Hospital so I thought I’d go out and see,” says Hoyle. “My father forbade me to work at the ‘insane asylum,’ but I took the test along with a friend of mine. When the results were mailed to my home, my father flung the letter at me.”

Hoyle said she was young and naïve, as well as “scared to death” and feels she was hired because she was refreshing. They offered her day or evening work and she took days, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

“The first day I was led to a room with rocking chairs and told to take one. I sat and rocked with patients. At lunchtime, I helped serve ladies lunch. I was in charge of the match to light the stove. Afterward I helped serve soup to patients strapped to their beds in the corridor.”

Her supervisor took one look at Hoyle and said she was sure the young woman was not returning the next day.

“But I did. Because I was strong, they tried me on the electric shock team. I was told to stand close. The next thing I knew I saw my breakfast on the doctor’s shoes. He told me I was not cut out for this.”

She volunteered for night duty.

“The first night a lady on the ward threw a chair at me. I asked her why she was angry and she told me she wanted to see what I was made of.”

Working at various tasks, including answering the phone and tending to the “violent ward,” Hoyle found she enjoyed working at the “experimental ward,” where the doctors were seeking cures for ailments such as yellow fever.

“I was given a promotion and was in charge of the census of five units. If peple got sick, I evaluated them.”

Times were primitive. Technicians with whom she worked were often illiterate. Foot-long rats ran through the courtyard.

“We were the new breed,” recalls Hoyle. “We treated patients with respect. I was there for three years and my husband came home on a 30-day leave. I resigned and was told that I wouldn’t be hired back.”

But she knew the personnel manager and was rehired at a higher salary. She was soon sent to school to become a technician.

“I trained three months, passed the test and was put on wards. It was ironic, but because I’d worked there before, they gave me the keys. When you were assigned to a ward, you bathed the patients, took them to the dining room and went into the yard in the afternoons. I’d sit by the gatekeeper. The matron thought I liked it too much; she put me back cleaning the ward. We’d have to wash the windows in our full uniform.”

The uniforms were another story. White, with fabric like cardboard, the uniforms were stiff reminders of where the technicians worked.

“I was sent to Albertson’s Department Store for my uniform. I was told to go to the back room, which was the rule. I was given a brown paper sack with my uniform, hose and white shoes. Napa didn’t like the state hospital. My mother used to iron my uniform.”

She was also told to cash her check the minute she received it.

“We’d rush to the bank on Friday because we were afraid if the State ran out of money, they wouldn’t pay us. It never happened to me.”

Hoyle stayed for 30 years. She declined offers of promotion and stayed a technician.
“I didn’t believe in all the rules (that management had to abide). At first, they didn’t give medication. On the weekdays when patients misbehaved they’d give them a time out in their rooms. I was one of the last ones to work on an open ward. When they were turned out into the streets, that was a terrible change.”

Still, she enjoyed her time there.
“I had fun and a lot of friends. People worked very hard and were good to the patients. I enjoyed it when they were sent home. I regretted when (the administration) made it so complicated, we spent more time on charts than with the patients. That was supposed to be progress but I didn’t like that. I wanted to help the patients.”

After celebrating their golden 50-year anniversary, Hoyle’s husband died two days later.

“We never had children, but my sister had six children, so I spend time with them. The best memory I have of working at Napa State Hospital was in the dining room. A patient needed a tracheotomy and the doctor told me to hold the patient. Afterward, the doctor said I had guts and I’d saved the patient’s life.”

According to its website, the current “Napa State Hospital staff are dedicated and committed to delivering high quality, cost-effective, professional services and specialized programs in an environment that promotes continuous improvements in treatment for individuals with mental disabilities… The hospital offers a broad range of diagnostic, treatment, habilitation, and rehabilitation services. Depending on the assessed needs of the individual, several treatment modalities may be utilized to enable individuals to achieve their optimum personal and social functioning, both in the hospital and in the community. Such treatment may involve pharmacological therapy, individual and group psychotherapy, educational, vocational and competency training, as well as other therapies such as independent living skills development, physical medical service, habilitation services such as supportive and cognitive skills development, and leisure time activities.”

“I was really lucky at Napa State Hospital,” says Hoyle. “I had a guardian angel that took care of me.”

Hoyle now lives at Concordia Manor in Napa.

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History Article – October 2007

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article October 2007.

A River Into Which None Can Step Twice
By Lauren Coodley

Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way; every new historian, not content with giving new answers to old questions, must revise the questions themselves- since historical thought is a river into which none can step twice. –R.G. Collingwood

When I began the research and writing of the first edition of my book about the city of Napa, it was 2003. I had never had the opportunity to write a book until that summer. Aided by the perspective of fifth generation Napan Cathy Mathews, whose father’s photograph would eventually form the cover of the book, by the insights of third generation Napan Ali Tuthill, and finally by the copious collection in the County Library, I immersed myself into what was already known and recorded about the history of the city in which I’d spent my adult life.

Like my first journey to this town when I was twenty-four years old, my journey into the history of Napa turned into a lifetime effort. My dear colleague Jane Smith had provided reams of former newspaper articles chronicling the changes of the city; through the generosity of Nancy Brennan, I also was able to write essays exploring the implications of the past. As my articles were published here in Marketplace, people began to write to me, adding their own descriptions and perspectives on the multi-faceted past of our town.

Many of these voices have been added to the new edition of my book. The most important new voice came from Paula Amen Schmitt (formerly Judah), whose childhood experiences here became essential to me in mapping the intricate relationships that nurtured this small city. We worked together to weave the letters I’d received and the knowledge she holds into a new narrative. And it was fitting that her name is now included on the cover of the new edition. Gathering information is a crucial part of the historical process, but writing about it is an art that demands impeccable wordsmithing skills. Paula’s experiences at the community college Writing Center gave our sentences the burnished elegance that they needed in order to tell our stories with the clarity demanded by the past.

When it came time to redo the Introduction to the new edition, I hesitated. What would I change? In the end, I chose to keep it exactly the same. Although the pace of change has accelerated here since 2003, everything I wrote then seems true:

In the late Nineteenth century, the land where indigenous people had camped by the river and gathered acorns under the oaks for ten thousand years was transformed. European settlers developed cattle ranches and wheat fields, which later became fruit orchards and dairies. These farmlands surrounded Napa into much of the twentieth century, even as factories were established along the banks of its river. Throughout the twentieth century, Napa remained a rural small-town, relatively inaccessible and largely ignored by outsiders.

As this book was written, the City of Napa was in the midst of a profound transformation, in which much of its visible history was fast disappearing. Napa had been “discovered” and the town that had once been little more than a pass-through point on the route to the wineries of the valley became a premier tourist destination. In a very brief time, Napa lost its notoriety as home to the mental hospital, and became inseparable from an image of luxury and easy living. Housing prices shot up, as the downtown was “revitalized” and vestiges of blue-collar life were removed.

While the town changed, many longtime Napans remain, and for them, the past is a living, breathing shadow… For every “Pear Tree” development that goes up, they remember the row of pear trees that was there before. As busy intersections replace open fields, they remember childhood games in the grass. As their children leave town in search of affordable homes, they remember a time when few people left town and fewer newcomers came.

Although Napa is unique in some important ways, it has participated in many of the struggles that define American life. In the nineteenth century, Napans planted orchards and established industries so that men and women could earn a living away from the farms. In the twentieth century, Napa was a blue-collar community, in which men and women found good, union jobs at local factories or at the nearby naval base. Young people participated in the anti-war movement and feminist activism, as their parents attended meetings at the Elks Lodge and the Women’s Club.

This historical record is still largely hidden in yearbooks, family photo albums, and boxes of yellowing newsletters. It is this story that the new field of social history tries to tell. The stories I sought were not those of the rich and the famous, but of those heroic individuals who tried to save farmlands, raise wages, and create and maintain family businesses. I wanted to capture what ordinary Napans experienced throughout the last century, what they did for entertainment, and how they felt about this town. I wanted to record the memories of the past as I watched the town transform into something new.

And yet, not all has changed, and the Napa of old continues on along the streets where tourists rarely walk. It is there in the old-fashioned family businesses still trying to survive. It is there in gatherings in back yards bursting with the fruit trees that still love the climate here. In this Napa, people drink beer and play softball, they bowl and buy tamales, they wait in line at Buttercream Bakery, and they remember and try to pass on to their children, and to inquiring historians, what life was like here in the almost vanished past.

The second edition contains new photographs, a new Epilogue, and delicious first-person accounts that we captured as we worked. Lauren Coodley and Paula Amen Schmitt will be discussing and signing copies of the new edition of Napa, the Transformation of an American Town, at Copperfields Books, on Tuesday, October l6, at 7pm, along with Todd L. Shulman of the Napa Police Historical Society, author of Napa County Police.

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History Article – August 2007

Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine History Article August 2007.

Finding the History of the Present Moment
By Lauren Coodley

Napa for half a century has been slumbering in a Rip Van Winkle sleep but she has awakened at last–Mayor JA Fuller, on the day the electric train service began from Vallejo through Napa, l905

As Napa is transformed, yet again, it might be helpful for us to look backwards. In the early 1970s, the Napa Community Redevelopment Agency reported: “Not since its settlers decided that Napa should be more than a mere stopping place for riverboats or mainly a miners’ refuge from the harsh winters of the Sierra foothills, have the sight and sound of new construction, public improvements, and general renovating proceeded at such a pace here… Drab thoroughfares are being dressed up as tree-lined malls, topped by an exciting new plaza.”

At the same time, many longtime residents were reluctant to see their hometown so radically changed. Journalist Jane Smith observed: “The city is getting a new city. The Migliavacca Building, a landmark of dove grey stone at First and Brown Streets, soon will crumple under the wrecking hammer. A modern department store in the urban renewal area will take its place. Century old trees, which gave the corner of Second and Seminary Streets its cool and shady aspect, have been destroyed for construction. The city is changing as never before…as fields and meadows fill up with new building, parking lots, stores, and apartments. Will the new city be as unique as the old, as beautiful and shady and comfortable? In fifty or a hundred years, will today’s structures have been as graceful and enduring as the homes built in the 1800s?”

While some Napans favored what looked like a revitalization of downtown, many businesspeople questioned the benefits of redevelopment. Brewster’s co-owner Rachel Friedman recalls how a group of Main Street merchants formed “Citizens Against the Destruction of Napa,” using her store as a meeting place. Friedman’s husband Larry particularly opposed the construction of a Clock Tower on First Street, and took his fight all the way to the California Supreme Court, where the case was lost.

As historian Richard Rice notes: “The decades from the 1960s-1980s were a creative period in resource and environmental policy…Although most local governments remained firmly in the grasp of development interests, slow growth movements captured some city governments as early as 1970…California’s environmental organizations increasingly acted as adversaries to business and government. A few paid professionals led a growing army of volunteers, often women, in projects that took on the intensity of crusades. They backed or opposed candidates for office on the basis of their stance on environmental issues.”

John Wagenknecht, who was the advisor to the University of California’s Co-op Extension here, cites Napa in the Seventies as an “example of the way community action can work.” Citizens resisted the plans to convert rural land into subdivisions and shopping centers, and succeeded in preserving open space for over a decade.

Blue-collar workers and professionals united in a group called “Neighbor,” led by Harold Kelly and Barbara Corotto. Wagenknecht describes them as “storming City Hall.” Their dedication led to the l973 referendum on development in Napa. The citizens voted to maintain the city boundaries, and to keep downtown as the center of the shopping district.

In 1975, city planners reflected that mandate by allowing for only minimal population development up to the year 2000.

East of downtown, Elsie Crane heard that the Lewis Dairy, just past Silverado Middle School, was going to be developed into expensive housing. Crane helped found “Keep Coombsville Green,” and the hard work of this organization kept the east side of town an agricultural region.

Although the battle to save the land was won, the crops themselves changed dramatically. John Wagenknecht remembers looking over Napa each spring, and seeing nothing but snowy blossoms on prune, pear, and peach trees. Wagenknecht says, “The conversion to monoculture was not healthy– but farmers were market driven and growing grapes always paid more money.”

By 1977, Louis Ezettie offered this poignant observation in his weekly newspaper column: “Once one of the great prune growing areas in the state, Napa County had seen the industry give way to an almost complete turnover to grape growing. Sunsweet disposed of the packing and shipping departments on Jackson Street, and reduced their workforce from 100 to 25 people. Napa Valley grown prunes, in my estimation, surpassed the quality of the fruit grown in other parts of the state. Every year we kids earned enough money picking prunes at the Frank Bush Ranch near Little Trancas to pay for school clothes and schoolbooks.”

In February l986, Napa experienced an event that neither could have been controlled nor predicted by developers or slow-growth advocates. What the Napa Register called “the most disruptive natural disaster to affect Napa County since the 1906 earthquake—and the most devastating flood since the winter of 1896,” saturated the soil, followed by 20 inches of rain in 48 hours. Southerly winds pushed the Napa River to levels none living had seen before. Nearly 5,000 people were evacuated from their homes, 250 homes were destroyed, 2500 homes were damaged, and three people died. Soscol Avenue turned into a river, ruining hundreds of cars on “Auto Row.” Two thirds of Napa’s businesses were damaged from the floodwaters, and the downtown stores were covered with mud.

Downtown was devastated, but merchants vowed to rebuild. The Napa Register reported: “Meyers Jewelers president Ian Fuller quipped, ‘I’ll wash all the diamonds and be back in business.’ Larry Friedman thanked his employees for saving the rest of the store by stacking sandbags until almost midnight; nobody has flood insurance. “If there’s such a thing as an ‘off the floor sale’ we’ll have one,” Friedman joked.

The town rallied behind the merchants’ resolve and plans began for a massive fundraising event to be held at the downtown parking garages. The People for People Flood Benefit was put together in less than two weeks. Lynda Otis of the Rockaholics band joined with local musicians to coordinate live music for the fundraiser.

But the day of the event, the promised sound system never arrived. “We were saved at the last minute by Vallejo Discount Music,” says Otis. “Those guys drove through the terrifying wind and rain to Napa and then up the ramps of the parking garage, through the crowd, hauling that huge concert system so the show could go on.” Backed by The Pablo Cruz Band, headliner Buddy Miles finally got on stage two hours late.

Lynda Otis remembers: “I was scared… so many of us in that giant tent on the top level of the garage. The winds were treacherous and the building shook under our feet—two thousand people stomping to the music—I wondered if the building would hold—or the tent—which looked like it might collapse from the wind gusts. I was standing by the firemen and I thought they looked nervous, too, but under the spell of the music, most people didn’t seem to notice the storm anymore.”

The building held and so did the tent. Fifteen thousand people attended the event, and $300,000 was raised. Napa Valley Times reporter Lou Louro describes the scene: “What a day! The Hatfields and Mc Coys celebrating together. No growthers buying a cup for growthers—nukers and no-nukers side-by-side, garage opponents and proponents splashing each other with champagne.”

The Great 1986 Flood brought the town together, creating countless legends of community daring and generosity. No one could have imagined that a decade later, the consequences of the flood management plan would begin to change the face of downtown—again—dramatically.

Sources:
Mayor Fuller’s quote from Swett, Ira, The Napa Valley Route, 1975.

Ezettie, Louis. “Looking into Napa’s Past and Present,” Napa Register, August 6, 1977.

Louro, Lou. Napa Valley Times, March 17, l986

Napa Register staff reporter, February 27, 1986.

Rice, Richard, William Bullough, and Richard Orsi, The Elusive Eden (New York: McGraw Hill), 2002.

Smith, Jane. Napa Register, November 8, 1972

Interviews with Wagenknecht and Friedman conducted by Lauren Coodley in 2003. Lynda Otis interviewed by Paula Amen Schmitt, who collaborated with Lauren Coodley on the new edition of Napa, the Transformation of an American Town.

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