It's in Northern California at the northeastern tip of San Francisco Bay (actually called San Pablo Bay up that far), about an hour's drive north of San Francisco. To the west is the Sonoma Valley, to the east is Lake Berryessa and Yolo and Solano Counties, and to the north Lake County. Napa Valley is actually just one of many valleys in Napa County, but it's by far the largest and best known. The valley itself is about 30 miles long and ranges from one to five miles wide.

Napa County has a population of about 110,000 people, and five incorporated cities. North to south, they are: Calistoga, St. Helena, Yountville, Napa and, at the southern end, American Canyon. Angwin, Deer Park, Lake Berryessa, Rutherford and Oakville are communities with post offices but aren't actual towns.

The county's primary industries are winegrape growing, wine production and tourism. Thanks to stringent and ongoing efforts by the vast majority of the voters, there is little development in the county itself; most commercial and residential development is in the cities. This preserves a huge amount of agricultural land, allowing Napa County to avoid the urban sprawl that has affected almost all other San Francisco Bay Area counties. The result is an attractive place for residents to live and tourists to visit.

The Napa River is one of four navigable rivers in California. It's a major source of freshwater to San Francisco Bay, and offers excellent fishing for striped bass and sturgeon. There's even peaceful canoeing right in the heart of Napa. It's also the home river for the "City of Napa", Napa's sternwheeler riverboat.

Currently a local organization, "Friends of the Napa River" has formed to preserve the river, which has a tendency to frequently flood parts of Napa. Of course building a city on a flood plain wasn't a great idea to begin with, but now that it's here, citizens are creating ways to save both the river and the city by turning out a river that's developed, flood-safe, and still natural and free-flowing.

The original inhabitants of the valley were the Wappo. The name Wappo was given by the Spanish and probably derived from the Spanish word "guapo", meaning "handsome." The natives were here at least 4,000 years before the Spaniards arrived. In 1831 there were an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 living in the valley. Most later lost their lives to cholera and smallpox, as well as to attacks by white men. There are still surviving Wappos in Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties.

The first American settler in the Napa Valley was George Yount. He arrived in 1831, became friends with General Mariano Vallejo, and was given an 11,000 acre Mexican land grant. He built the first wooden structure in the county, a two-story Kentucky block house. He also planted the first grapevines in the Napa Valley. The vines were from Mexico; it was not until 1860 that the higher quality European winegrapes were introduced.

The wealth of post-Gold Rush San Francisco created a huge demand for wine, and by 1891 there were 619 vineyards throughout the valley. The wineries survived economic depression and the disease of phylloxera but were no match for Prohibition, the United States' "Great Experiment" of declaring alcoholic beverages not just immoral but illegal. Prohibition closed almost every Napa Valley winery. The few that survived provided medicinal wine or sacramental wine for churches. Vineyards were ripped out, to be replaced by prune and walnut orchards.

Prohibition ended in 1933, but it was not until 1966 that a new winery was finally built in the Napa Valley. It was Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville. Since that time several hundred wineries have been built, as the Napa Valley was rediscovered as a premium wine region, recapturing its earlier pre-Prohibition fame. Today there are more than 200 wineries throughout the county.

Today the Napa Valley is one of the most popular tourist attractions in California, and world renowned for its wines. The fame of its wineries is matched by the reputation of its restaurants. Combined with the beauty of the area, they provide a vacation holiday without equal anywhere in the country.

Although many locals like to say that the Napa Valley gets as many visitors as Disneyland, the reality is that Disneyland has about 14 million visitors a year and the Napa Valley a little over five million. Five million is enough--particularly because most of them come either during the summer or during "crush", the harvest in September and October. Come visit us during late fall, over the winter, or in the spring and you'll find far fewer people and have much more time to chat with winery staff. The valley is beautiful all year long, just different from season to season. The wine is always delicious.

The Napa Valley's climate and soil have made it one of the world's great wine growing regions. It has long been famous for its ability to grow Bordeaux grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc. Later it was discovered that the southern part of the valley, particularly the Carneros region next to the San Francisco Bay, was ideal for growing the grapes of Burgundy, including Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Other popular wines include Merlot, Zinfandel, Riesling, Petite Sirah, Gamay Beaujolais and Chenin Blanc, and some wineries are producing Semillon, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Muscat. Recently there has been a return to the old Italian grapes that were once grown in the valley and wineries are beginning to produce such wines as Pinot Grigio, Sangiovese and Dolcetto.

There are also a small number of wineries that produce sparkling wine. Technically a sparkling wine has to be produced in the Champagne district of France to be called "Champagne", but because the United States never signed the international accord agreeing to that, some Napa Valley wineries call their product "champagne". Others honor the agreement and refer to their products as "sparkling wine."

American Canyon is Napa County's newest and second largest city, incorporated just a few years ago. For visitors driving from up Highway 80 from the East Bay, it's the "gateway" to the Napa Valley.

Napa

The city of Napa is the county seat, founded in 1848 by Nathan Coombs. During Gold Rush days, cattle and lumber were mainstays of the local economy. Today the economy is based on wine and tourism; over 60,000 people live here.

Every road in the Napa Valley is scenic. Some are just more scenic than others. Highway 29, the main road up the (westish) center of the valley, takes you through all the valley towns and right by some of the area's most famous wineries and restaurants. And from Napa to St. Helena it parallels the route of the Napa Valley Wine Train. Wave at the engineer and passengers. That's half the fun for everybody.

Passing through St. Helena, Highway 29 is called Main Street. Along most other stretches it's referred to as the Saint Helena Highway. In reality it's all Highway 29 - a divided highway from Napa to Yountville, and a two-lane highway (with frequent left-turn lanes) all the way from Yountville to Calistoga. Caltrans, the State of California's transportation department, would love to make 29 a divided highway the whole length of the valley, but the natives have fought valiantly and successfully to prevent this from happening. Even most of those who commute up or down the valley are willing to put up with the inconvenience of a two-lane road in order to preserve the beauty of the drive.

To get a full appreciation of the Napa Valley, you should definitely drive Highway 29, in one direction or the other.