You’ve just left Raley’s with a turkey for your holiday festivities. You head north on Soscol and veer off on the Silverado Trail. As you tack to the right, you scarcely notice the little brown building with its colorful Lotto solicitations and tacky aluminum awnings, but you do see the realtor’s sign. Napa County’s oldest building, the Old Adobe, is up for sale.

When a 165-year-old landmark is up for sale, a review of its history is warranted.

Imagine, 169 years ago, standing at that intersection, chest high in wild oats as far as you can see. There are no roads; elk, bear, deer, geese and ducks roam the whole of the valley. Bands of the Wappo people are living off this land as they have for thousands of years.

This was when Caytano Juarez, a sergeant in the Mexican army, decided to move his family here from Sonoma. Because of his impeccable military service, Juarez was awarded a rancho, a large tract of land, of more than 8,800 acres.

He settled atop a small knoll, just a half mile south of the yet-to-be-laid-out-town of Napa. Using Tulocay creek clay, redwoods and fiberous, binding plants, the local Native Americans created the California adobe.

One of the first permanent settlers into the Napa Valley, Juarez built two adobes and a barn, a conspicuous farmstead in the vast Rancho Tulocay.

The adobe, built in 1843, was the beginning of the town of Napa; two years later the first street grids for the town were laid. Here eight of 11 Juarez children were born and from it 1,500 head of cattle, sheep and horses were tended across the Rancho. Juarez  donated two significant parcels of land that would forever define Napa: 288 acres for the State Asylum for the Insane (now Napa State Hospital) and 50 acres for a burial ground later known as Tulocay Cemetary. As the Gold Rush ebbed and California became a state, Napa grew rapidly. Wooden, multi-story buildings were being erected. Adobes were already a relic of the Mexican past.

Eighty-two years later, in 1927, the wine business had replaced the ranching, cattle, tannery and wheat industries. Napa was one of California’s wealthiest towns. The old Juarez barn and one adobe had crumbled with time, while the main homestead adobe, still strong and stalwart, was turned into a bar: The Old Adobe Bar.

A brick and stone fireplace was added in 1935, and a kitchen built 15 years later served the bar’s growing patronage. Around 1952 murals depicting scenes of the Mexican rancho life.were painted on interior plastered walls. These rare and important scenes have recently been painted over but with proper conservation techniques, might be reclaimed.

Now, in 2008, the Old Adobe, now a restaurant as well as a bar, still sits at its original location but that once tranquil spot is now the busy and bustling epicenter of redevelopment. This is Napa’s second (the first occurred in the ’70s) redevelopment, which promises revitalization of targeted economic zones.

Portions of the pedestrian unfriendly south end of town have been termed “blighted” and the Old Adobe is smack in the middle of  the boarded up buildings and auto dealers.

Roy Tulles, a structural engineer from ELT & Associates, who specializes in analysis of adobe, rammed earth, brick and wood buildings, said, “In the whole of California there are no more than 500 remaining adobes. North of San Francisco there are very very few. Napa has one of these rare landmarks, and it is in very good, relatively unaltered condition.”

The Old Adobe has been configured into four potential redevelopment plans. Cindy Heitzman, Napa resident and president of the California Preservation Foundation, said, “This is one of the last remaining adobe structures in Napa county. It is rare. We have an opportunity to steward this building so it may go another 200 years.”

 “I’d like to see this become a county museum,” said the great grandson of Cayetano Juarez, Don Juarez, who lives in Chiles Valley. “It’s the only way it will survive. Anything is better than a bar.”

If you were to walk into the Old Adobe right now you’d see a building in stunningly fine shape, although you’d still need to duck as you enter through the three-foot thick doorways.

Architect and Cultural Heritage Commission Chairwoman Sarah Van Geisen remarked, “People have slept, eaten, drank, engaged in brawls and songs, exchanged goods and money, and shared stories under this thick roof for over 166 years.”

Whatever direction planners and politicians choose, this icon to our history has the potential to be a beacon for Napa Valley, a guidepost for the entrance to the city of Napa.

Long time, Napa resident Vince Deguillo said, “The adobe is a tangible connection to our history. All too often we learn about our history through artist’s renderings of what it might have looked like. We are incredibly fortunate to be able to see, touch and experience up close an actual adobe building. I see the adobe and I picture it as it was in the 1840s and imagine what it must have been like when it was the only structure in the valley. Native Americans living close by. The valley pristine and untouched”

In addition to the challenges of its setting, are questions of seismic-retrofitting. It’s on the city’s list of URM (unreinforced masonry) buildings that needs retrofitting, which could prove to be an expensive proposition.

“Optimistically, this humble adobe structure can continue to adapt with the changing times, as it has always done, to house new uses and people that will extend it’s sense of longevity,” Van Giesen concluded.