Napa's Intensely Modified Past

One of the San Francisco Estuary Institute's historical ecology projects is in Napa Valley. Napa is still synonymous with sleepy, undeveloped land - put 1930s-era photos of the Napa Valley and the Santa Clara Valley side by side and they look a lot alike. Compare the two in 2009, and Napa's the same, while the Santa Clara Valley has become the developed heart of Silicon Valley. But Napa's agrarian nature conceals an extensively modified environmental past. Robin Grossinger and his colleagues at the institute are working on a huge project to document that change, the Napa Valley Historical Ecology Atlas, which will be published by UC Press next year. Among their sources: old maps, aerial photos, accounts by explorers and travelers - even old paintings showing the valley before it was so extensively farmed.

"In Napa there's tremendous potential because it's agricultural still, but it's been intensely modified...It doesn't look anything like what it looked like 100 years ago. It was considered a remarkably beautiful place by travelers 150 years ago, and it still is, but for different reasons."
— Robin Grossinger, SFEI