Napa River

About

Napa River, California — 1861 Charles Krug First Winery, 1830s-1840s Napa Valley, 1998 NVV, 1980s-2010s flood. Long before the vineyards, the Napa Valley was the homeland of the Wappo people, who lived in villages along the river from Calistoga to the bay. They cultivated the valley's oak woodlands and wetlands, managing the landscape with fire and harvesting acorns, salmon, and tule reeds. The name 'Napa' likely derives from a Patwin word for 'house' or 'homeland.' In that era the river was a far wilder thing, its more than 30 miles of side channels giving young steelhead both forage and refuge.

The first large-scale intrusion came with timber. From the 1830s through the 1920s, the watershed was logged to support the regional timber industry of the 1850s through 1910s and the railroad expansion of the 1860s through 1910s. Local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations were the major operators. The exhaustion of the old-growth stands around 1910, the start of state forestry conservation in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s ended large-scale logging.

Wine, not timber, would define the river's modern story. Krug's 1861 winery sparked a wave of new growth, following the first European American settlement of the 1830s and 1840s. Prosperity came at the river's expense. Through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers encased the river in concrete under the Napa County Flood Control Project, straightening a channel that had once meandered across its floodplain. The Corps designed the channelization in the 1960s to move water fast and protect the growing valley towns.

Hydrologists had been measuring the river far longer than they had been reshaping it. The USGS survey work of the 1870s through 1890s, the establishment of gauging stations from the 1880s through the 1910s, and state geological streamflow assessments of the 1910s through 1930s formed the first comprehensive hydrological studies of the watershed. Later, state water pollution control studies from the 1950s through the 1970s and Clean Water Act assessments from 1972 through 2000 addressed more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts, work that fed into modern restoration and TMDL programs.

Since the 1980s, the tide has turned back toward the river. The Napa River Flood Control and Restoration Project ranks among the most ambitious urban stream restoration efforts in the United States, knitting flood protection back to living habitat. Its first 'living river' flood control approach in the U.S. restored floodplain connectivity and native habitat along 6.9 miles through the city of Napa, crowned by the 2015 Oxbow Bypass. Salmon and steelhead have returned, and the restored wetlands now support more than 200 bird species. Today the river runs through three named paddling reaches: the Upper Napa from Calistoga to Yountville, a Class I riffle float past vineyards; the Middle Napa from Yountville to Napa through the wine country corridor; and the Tidal Napa from Napa to San Pablo Bay, a year-round flatwater estuary. The river supports the Napa, Yountville, and St. Helena economies and a wine industry valued above $10 billion.