A Napa Author Rediscovers "Lost Napa Valley"
By Kathleen Reynolds, Napa Valley Register ~ February 2021
Bored on a Saturday? Why not head over to the Wheelhouse Roller Rink, Paradise Mini Golf, or the Kay-Von Drive-in to skate, putt or snuggle in your car to watch movies? Oh, wait. The skating rink at River Park Shopping Center closed in 1988, the mini-golf course on Third Street was demolished to make way for the Flood Project in 2005 and the drive-in theater was gutted by fire in the 1970s and shut down in 1981.
In her newest book, Lost Napa Valley, author Lauren Coodley presents a fascinating if poignant, remembrance of Napa Valley’s past. The book includes chapters on “Where We Worked,” “Where We Played,” “Where We Shopped” and others describing the Napa Valley that used to be.
“I especially enjoyed writing the shopping chapter,” said Coodley. “I remember all the places when I was a young mother of two children. I loved the small businesses downtown and the places like Family Drug Store were important in my life.”
She doesn’t dwell on a particular decade in Lost Napa Valley. “Each generation misses something different from their childhood. I didn’t write it for a particular generation but wanted to honor all of them.”
For example, she’s spoken to students who mourn the loss of the much-maligned Clock Tower in Dwight Murray Plaza. “It was their aesthetic.”
Coodley praises the people who worked the valley; from its indigenous tribes, through the prosperous ranching Californios who drove out the natives, to the family farmers such as the Minahens, Buhmans and von Uhlits that made Napa Valley unique.
More recent history includes the Cameron Shirt Company, which opened in 1901 by W. H. Cameron and thrived with workers such as Carl Franco, whose father had been an indentured servant working in Napa orchards and his mother, descended from an Italian pioneer Napa family. Carl was the president of the local Garment Workers Union and a member of many local organizations, including assistant scout leader of Troop No. 10, until his untimely death in 1946 in the cutting room, at 36 years old. One hundred Scouts formed a guard of honor at the church for the funeral.
Cameron Shirt Company became part of Rough Rider Clothing Company on Soscol Avenue in 1955. Rough Rider closed its Napa operations in 1980.
“There were so many people involved in forming the Napa Valley from Rough Rider to the State Hospital. This is like a scrapbook of the past to preserve for the future. I’m motivated to honor these places and people.”
When thanking the dozens of people who helped her with their memories, family photos and yellowed news articles, Coodley chuckles. “There are always readers who come up to me and tell me all that I didn’t include. The lost service station that their fathers ran, those kinds of things.”
Coodley isn’t a native Napan but feels like she is. “I came here at age 24. Due to a friend’s recommendation, I got my first real job teaching Women’s Studies at Napa Valley College’s up-valley campus.
“I didn’t have a background in history, but I had studied Women’s Literature. I thought a long time about how the class should be. There was hardly any literature on Women’s Studies. The few articles I could find were often mimeographed copies.”
In the ‘70s, when women realized there was more to history than what the male historians explained, her classes grew in popularity.
“Women hated history. In high school, most of the history classes were taught by the sports coaches. Since I had the freedom to design my own course, I decided there would be no intimidating tests. I told the students ‘the only dates you need are these,’ and passed out dried dates. Instead, I had students write about the history of women in their families. They would create small books to preserve that history.
“Napa women have a history no one knows but family. I even wrote a little book for my grandmother’s birthday and wrote another small book for a friend when she was ill.”
Coodley decided if she was going to teach history, she wanted credentials. She headed back to college and received an MA in history in two years. Her “American Women’s History” classes grew to include courses on “California History” and “Napa-Vallejo History.” She received the McPherson Distinguished Teaching Award and was elected president of the faculty.
Around that time, an American History publisher, Arcadia, sent letters to history instructors across the country asking for books about “The History of My Town.”
“I’d read everything I could on Napa and had always clipped articles and saved them. I thought this is a chance to put what I know into a book. In the summer of 2003, when I had a break from teaching, I worked on the book.”
Her manuscript became Napa, the Transformation of an American Town. Since then, she’s written many other titles, including Napa Valley Chronicles, 2013; Upton Sinclair: California Socialist Celebrity Intellectual, 2013; and The Same River Twice, 2018.
Since her retirement from teaching, she spends quality time with her two grandsons. Although she loves that, she says she misses teaching. “I wanted to weave an experience, one that my students would always remember. I used some of my students’ quotes about local history at the end of Lost Napa. I hope they’ll be thrilled.”
Coodley wants people to find her books, especially Lost Napa Valley, to be educational but fun.
“When people ask why I didn’t include this person or that place in the book, I tell them that I know there are a hundred stories for every story I tell and a hundred people for everyone I interviewed. What I write is not definitive, people need to write down their family’s stories and preserve them.”