Old News

By Bill Kisliuk

California has a seemingly endless number of fascinating nooks and crannies, places where human history touched down for just a second or where some natural feature is the only one of its kind — or spots where the natural and the historical came together to make a location memorable, like the James Dean Tree near Cholame, Captain Jack‘s Stronghold near Tule Lake or Scotty‘s Castle in Death Valley.

Even inveterate California ramblers find something fascinating in Calistoga. The geothermal activity makes it special, and among the Golden State’s geothermal areas, none have developed the array of mud bathhouses and spas, from luxury to low-down, that Calistoga has.

The name is lovely and has a singular history, as Sam Brannan famously stumbled while claiming the area had such therapeutic qualities that it would become, he meant to say, the Saratoga of California.

Not long afterward author Robert Louis Stevenson memorialized the place with his “Silverado Squatters,” written as he lived at a camp in a glen on the shoulder of Mount St. Helena.

But these stories are well-known. A different tale is told through the images in “Calistoga,” a newly-published book written by John Waters. Jr., the editor of our sister paper, the Weekly Calistogan, and the people at Calistoga’s Sharpsteen Museum, where the history of what many know as the Upper Valley is very much alive.

Essentially a photo essay, the book includes about 200 images from over the years. The publisher, Arcadia Publishing, specializes in photo galleries and micro-histories of the United States. Recent titles include a book on Ben’s Chili Bowl, a culinary and social institution in Washington, D.C., and one called “The Irish of San Francisco.“ Arcadia has published five books about Napa, including Napa Valley College professor Lauren Cooldey’s recent social history of the town since World War II.

Some of the images in “Calistoga” are typical small town stuff: People navigating the mains street (while the main street in Calistoga is Lincoln Avenue, for decades the town did have a Main Street).

Some are merely suggestive. The photos of Clark Foss as an older gent don’t quite paint the picture of the stagecoach navigator extraordinaire who took people through the wilds to Geyserville , a ride that is hairy enough today, when we have the benefit of gasoline-powered vehicles with air bags and air conditioning.

Some are striking, as is the image of the townspeople standing in front of the rubble left after a 1901 fire.

Some are just mystifying: Why did a trickster cross from one side of Lincoln to another on a tight rope high above town in the 1917, much less twice in a week?

Through these pages, one gets an imperfect but abiding sense of the community as it was. For those who know where to look, there are clear traces from these pioneers and citizens of the past to the goings-on in Calistoga today.

Or, as Waters put it in his inscription in my copy: “There’s no news like old news!”

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009