St Helena California — Retro Vintage History

What's with Mount St. Helena? The town takes its name from the mountain that stands at the head of the valley — Mount St. Helena, a 4,340-foot peak that closes off the upper Napa Valley to the north. (It is not, despite a century of confusion, the volcano: that's Mount St. Helens, a different mountain and a different spelling, a thousand miles up in Washington.) Mount St. Helena is the quiet giant of wine country — the cool night air that slides down off it is part of what makes the grapes here what they are — and, as you'll see, it has its own literary ghost.

Long before the vineyards, this was the country of the Wappo. The Napa Valley Wappo lived in the valley and its surrounding hills for thousands of years, fishing the Napa River and its creeks, gathering acorns in the oak woodlands, and trading across the coast ranges. They knew this ground in fine detail centuries before the first survey stake went in, and an honest history of St. Helena begins with them — not as a footnote to the wine story, but as the valley's first and longest chapter.

American settlers arrived in the upper valley in the 1850s, drawn by deep, well-watered soil and a long growing season. The little town that grew up around a store and a church took the mountain's name, and it was incorporated as the City of St. Helena in 1876. From the start it was an agricultural town first — wheat, cattle, and orchards as much as grapes — set in the narrow, fertile stretch of valley between the Mayacamas range and the Vaca hills, where the road north ran on toward Calistoga and the mountain.

But it was wine that made the valley's name. By the 1860s and 1870s, growers had learned that the gravelly upper-valley benches and warm days were close to ideal for the vine, and a cluster of stone wineries rose around the town — some of the oldest in California, built of hand-cut stone with cellars dug back into the hillsides to hold the cool. Prohibition nearly killed the whole enterprise in the 1920s, and only a handful of cellars survived by making sacramental and medicinal wine; the revival that began in the 1960s turned the Napa Valley, with St. Helena at its heart, into one of the most famous wine regions on earth.

The mountain's literary ghost is Robert Louis Stevenson. In the summer of 1880, broke and newly married, the young Scottish writer spent his honeymoon squatting in an abandoned miners' bunkhouse on the slopes of Mount St. Helena, at the played-out Silverado mine. He wrote the months up in The Silverado Squatters, and it was there, tasting the valley's young wines, that he set down the line wine country has quoted ever since — that wine is "bottled poetry." The peak and a state park on its flank both carry his memory today.

Two older landmarks anchor the town's history. North of the center, the Bale Grist Mill — a water-powered flour mill built in 1846, with a towering red waterwheel — still stands as a state historic park, a relic of the valley's pre-wine farming days. And at the edge of town rises Greystone, a vast stone cellar finished in 1889 and now home to the Culinary Institute of America's western campus. Along Main Street, the squat stone storefronts of the 1880s give St. Helena the look it is known for: a small, solid, hand-built town in the middle of the vines.

Our St. Helena logo carries the same emblem every Merlin Classics California place wears — the grizzly bear and lone star of the state flag, above "California Republic · Est. 1850," the year of statehood, printed in a worn, hand-pressed black and white. The bear is California's mark, the through-line that ties St. Helena to every other California town we make. What makes this one St. Helena is everything around it: the mountain at the head of the valley, the old stone cellars, and the vineyards running off in every direction. On a tee or a cap it reads less like a souvenir than a small piece of the Napa Valley itself.

Today St. Helena is the quiet heart of the Napa Valley — a stone-built wine town between the Mayacamas and the Vacas, under the mountain that gave it its name. Its story runs from a Wappo homeland through a farm town's beginnings to the center of California wine, with Robert Louis Stevenson and a big red waterwheel along the way. Our St. Helena designs gather that identity into wearable form — the bear-and-1850 emblem, the mountain, and the vines. St. Helena, California: bottled poetry, worn plain.

St Helena, California — Travel Guide

Visiting St Helena Today

St. Helena sits on Highway 29 in the heart of the Napa Valley, about an hour and a half north of San Francisco, with Mount St. Helena closing the valley to the north and the Silverado Trail running quietly up the eastern side. It is a compact, walkable wine town — stone storefronts, shaded parks, and tasting country in every direction — an easy base for a few days in the valley.

Mount St. Helena, the Mill & Wine-Country Life

For visitors looking for things to do in St. Helena, California:

• Walk Main Street, the 1880s stone-fronted downtown of galleries, shops, and tasting rooms.
• Visit the Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park north of town, with its 1846 water-powered wheel and oak-woodland trails.
• Tour Greystone, the great 1889 stone cellar that is now the Culinary Institute of America's western campus.
• Drive or cycle the Silverado Trail, the scenic back road up the eastern edge of the valley.
• Hike Robert Louis Stevenson State Park on Mount St. Helena, the valley's high peak and the writer's honeymoon ground.
• Relax at Crane Park or the town's historic stone library, a few blocks off Main Street.

Why People Visit St Helena

St. Helena offers Napa Valley at its most walkable and unhurried — a real town in the middle of the vineyards, with deep wine heritage, a literary past, and the mountain overhead. Visitors come for the tasting country and the scenery and stay for the small-town stone streets and the easy pace. It is refined without being precious, and beautiful in every season.

For deeper reading on the St. Helena history described here — the Wappo homeland of the Napa Valley, the 1850s settlement and the 1876 incorporation of the town, the rise of the valley's stone wineries from the 1860s, Robert Louis Stevenson's 1880 sojourn on Mount St. Helena recorded in The Silverado Squatters, and the 1846 Bale Grist Mill — it may be useful to consult (1) the St. Helena Historical Society and its heritage center, (2) the Napa County Historical Society, (3) the California State Library and the State Office of Historic Preservation, (4) the Napa Valley Wine Library at the St. Helena Public Library, and (5) the Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park interpretive staff. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) Visit Napa Valley, (2) the St. Helena Chamber of Commerce, (3) California State Parks for the Bale Grist Mill and Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, (4) the City of St. Helena, and (5) the National Weather Service Bay Area for North Bay seasonal advisories.