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.
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.
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.
