This past Saturday, on the evening of All Saints Day – aka the Day of the Dead – Napa County Historical Society held its first ever Downtown Napa Ghost Tour. Guests got sneak peeks inside one of the most haunted buildings in the county, visited a fantastic Día de Muertos altar at Pearl Restaurant, and […]
This past Saturday, NCHS hosted the book launch for the debut book by Patricia Prestinary, Napa State Hospital. The event, relocated to Silo’s because of the earthquake damage to the Goodman Library, was a rousing success! Copies of the book are on sale through our website and in bookstores across the country. Napa, because of […]
Monday, August 6, 1945 At 8:15am Japan time, the United States dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki was also bombed. Nearly 200,000 people were killed during the bombing. The attacks took out several arms production facilities and some military personnel. Tuesday, August 6, 1974 The west wall of the old Masonic […]
I heard we had a Japanese Internment Camp in Napa. Is that true? Over the years many patrons have come to Napa County Historical Society asking about a rumored Japanese Internment Camp in Napa during World War II. Some of younger volunteers had no idea there may have been such a camp in Napa, while […]
The Summer 2013 Tidings is another installment of Dr. Felicia Shinnamon’s fascinating oral histories on Pope Valley. The following is an excerpt of that oral history. To get your copy of Tidings, become a member today! Dr. Lyon’s fond childhood memories of Aetna motivated him to take his own children there in the 1960s. They […]
Summer means vacation time for many people, but here at Napa County Historical Society it means new interns. This summer we brought on five (!) interns. Three are students working on their Master’s in Library and Information Science at San Jose State University, and the other two are working on their BAs and studying history. […]
This Independence Day, celebrate Napa County’s history with this cool slideshow of images from the NCHS archives. See how Napans way back when celebrated the Fourth of July!
While poking around the Napa County Historical Society Library one day, I came across our small but exceptionally unusual collection of cookbooks. The one that immediately drew my eye is named Cupid’s Book and bears a handwritten note on its cover: “This book was handed out along with your marriage license in 1940.” Though I […]
What does Napa mean? I’ve heard more than a dozen different origin theories for Nappa, the town’s original name, but most claim the word derived from a Wappo or Patwin word, which is probably true. What that original term was, is an entirely different matter. Wappo were one of the two largest Native American groups […]
Our mission here at Napa County Historical Society is to “keep history alive.” The most obvious way we do that is through our research library and archives, where we preserve, protect, and provide access to irreplaceable and invaluable information about the history of our county and its people. We also follow our mission through regular […]
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