MUSEUM

NAPA VALLEY MUSEUM
Today is Wednesday, September 16, 2009. We are off on our weekly sojourn to the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville. We leave at 9:45, with five residents, and Tony and Kelli, on board our mini bus.
They are still working on the North Texas inter-change construction. While I have read about the project, I am still having trouble picturing the final result. Whatever it will look like, it will be a very nice improvement. The re-surfacing of I-80 is certainly a big improvement. The smooth ride is very nice. It is a warm sunny day, with a robin-egg blue sky above. Visibility is good.
Gas at Arco is $3.08, with oil futures about $71/bbl. We pass the Meals on Wheels delivery van. While we used to be a customer of MOW, I’d never seen the vehicle that delivered the frozen meals from the kichen in Suisun to Valleo. Traffic is light in our westbound direction, but the Eastbound lanes are clogged. I notice the Long’s (Drugs) sign is still on their warehouse in Suisun. CVS ( who bought Longs recently) has replaced the signage on all of their local drug stores.
Traffic is backed up in all four directions at the busy merge of Highways 12 and 29. This is the scene, day in- day out, at most all hours. We approach the “Y”, where Soscal, to downtown Napa, heads to the right, and we continue on #29 to go to Sonoma or up valley. There is a familiar landmark on the hill to the right - a sculpture of a man operating a grape press. My eyes are always drawn to this memorial, near the George F. Butler Memorial Bridge, crossing the Napa River. An acquaintance committed suicide at this spot, many years ago.
We are passing the Meadows of Napa Valley, a very nice retirement community. The complex has been enlarged, since it first opened, almost 25 years ago. It is very nice! We passed Marie Callendar’s. I was surprised that it was open, as the one in Fairfield closed recently. Apparently the restaurants are franchises. The scenery is quite picturesque - vineyards in the foreground, and rolling hills in the background.
We arrive at the museum at 10:35. It is located on the grounds of the huge California Veterans’ Home in Yountville. I hadn’t heard of the Museum before, probably because it was housed in St. Helena - until about eight years ago, when it was moved to Yountville. I asked a museum staff member"Why the move?" She gave me a few reasons:
- Their museum building in St. Helena needed to be earthquake proofed, which would have been very expensive; they wanted to be closer to Napa, which would give them a larger drawing pool; the Veterans Home was willing to sign a favorable long-term lease for a building on their property, and the Museum received donatios to assist them in refurbishing the new- leased building.

The Napa Valley is very picturesque, with an almost Mediterranean climate. The grapes like this weather. The Valley lies between the Mayacamas Range and the Vaca range. Yountville was founded by George Yount. He was the first non-Mexican to receive a Mexican Land Grant. In order to receive such a grant, you had to be a Catholic, and be a Mexican citizen. Yount received 11,814 acres, part of which is the present day Yountville, including the Veterans’ Home. Yount is credited with starting the first vineyard in the Napa Valley. General Vallejo hired him to make the shingles for his home in Sonoma. George Yount died in 1865. The population of Yountville today is around 3,000 people.
The Veterans’ Home of California, in Yountville, was founded in 1884, and is the largest veterans’ home in the U.S. About 1100 aged or disabled veterans - both men and women of all wars - live here.
While the Napa Valley Museum is small - on two levels - it is very well done. It contains many items from the early pioneer days of Yountvtlle, and a superior collection of local rocks, ores and minerals. Also, exhibited are:
An Edison cylinder player; an upright telephone, with a separate receiver (we had one of theses phones when I was growing up in Michigan). A kerosene lamp. (I can remember that we had a number of these, and we lit the wicks quite often during power outages.); A large table-radio; a U.S.Mail stage coach, built by the Copperhead Coach Company in 1869; a sign (circa 1930) “Napa 13,155 - elev. 17`; an early picture of the old Uptown theatre. (The last I heard, the theatre was purchased by a couple of Hollywood producers, who also own wineries. They planned on renovating the theatre which was built in 1936. But, I think that the renovating work has stalled, and their plans are on hold.) - a Civil War “General Grant” wheel chair. There also was a picture of the President sitting in one just like it. The chair has metal wheels, and the steel rims were wrapped to deaden the noise.
The Museum has a unique program staffed by volunteers. They have eleven trunks to transport different “theme” exhibits from the museum to the schools for exhibition and commentary.
The very well done exhibit of gems and minerals was very interesting to me. They are exhibited in the main level section as well as the basement- section. We leave the museum at 12:20.
It only took Tony only five minutes, to drive to the Napa Valley Grill in Yountville, We had a very nice lunch. \There was a good selection of entree’s, and the quality was good. It was moderately priced. I would rate it a 4* The Chef de Cuisine is Jason Buckley. The restaurant is located at the north end of the Vintage 1870 shopping complex. We leave the restaurant at 2:00.
We re-trace our route back to Fairfield. Visibility is good. From the high bridge on Highway 29, I can see Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County - a distance of about 30 miles. We pass just east of the Napa Airport, as Tony turns onto Highway 12. We are running next to a freight train heading in the opposite direction while riding through Jameson Canyon. There are still large inventories of “Clunkers” on the Fairfield auto dealers’ lots, bordering
I-80.
We are back at Quail Creek at 2:45, after covering about 60 miles. It was a very nice day.
RCL - 9/22/09.