Calistoga, A Town Built for Visitors

By Kent Domogalla

Tourism? Visitors?? While some places may struggle with this, Calistoga is not one of them. Calistoga's origin was as a visitor destination. Sam Brannan, California's first millionaire, founded Calistoga to take advantage of the geothermal springs, fashioning it after Saratoga Springs in his native New York. His visitors were California's newly affluent. Nowadays, the concept is the same except today's visitor arrives by automobile rather than train or coach.

Sam's resort which included a hotel, guest cottages (several of which are still serving their original use) and grounds which included a race track, observatory and arboretum was a west coast wonder and was described by Bancroft's Guide of 1873 as follows: "There are near twenty-five neat and comfortable cottages for the accommodation of guests. The grounds are laid off into walks and ornamented with choice selections of trees shrubbery and flowers. ..The town is quite a lively place for business, being the terminus of the railroad and being closely connected by stage lines with Lake county, the Geysers, Healdsburg, and Santa Rosa. The waters of the springs hold in solution sulfur, iron, magnesia, and various other chemical properties."

Of course they did have a way with words in those days, so they went on to a more florid description: "There is evidently some mysterious agency at work underground at Calistoga, not quite comprehensible to visitors. Chemists and savans, indeed, explain the matter in the most learned and scientific manner, by speaking of chemical reaction among mineral substances and the like, and make out a very plausible theory. But the explanation to many people, needs as much explaining as the mystery itself, and when a man finds the ground under his feet to be hot, and the waters issuing from it to be in the neighborhood of the boiling point, he cannot well help harboring a suspicion that the "diabolusipse" is at work within perilous proximity, especially since the imagination is somewhat helped to the sinister conclusion by a prevailing and most Stygian odor." Ah, they just don't write copy like that anymore.

Walking around Calistoga you can still find Sam's plan in operation. While
Hot Spring resorts still are the focus, more than 500 visitor rooms from
Inns to Bed & Breakfasts are now available and day spas have expanded on the therapeutic services available. Of course, Sam also expanded Calistoga into the wine business, founded a brewery and built a brandy distillery (home of
Calistoga Cognac). Oh well we still have plenty of friendly wineries, a great mico-brewery and while we lost that distillery, we do have many great restaurants able to provide an after dinner libation.

A great way to get the flavor of early Calistoga is to visit the Sharpsteen Museum in the easy to walk downtown. This history museum designed by Ben Sharpsteen, a Disney Studio Producer and local resident, uses action dioramas to create a vision of Calistoga in the 1860's. In the dioramas you can see buildings which still grace Calistoga's streets, such as Brannan era cottages, the race track stables, and the Brannan store.

A favorite for visitors to Calistoga from the beginning has been the great outdoors from the surrounding country side to the Petrified Forest to Old Faithful Geyser (of California). Looming over town is Mt. St Helena, the highest point (4,343 feet) in the area, from the top of which you can see Mt. Diablo to the south. In earlier times you would have taken a stagecoach up the old toll road to reach the top, a harrowing journey, especially if your driver was Clark Foss who was known for his risk taking (and for his description in Robert Louis Stevenson's Silverado Squatters ). Today's visitors can now use hiking trails reaching from Calistoga to the peak, in what is now the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. For those more mechanically inclined, the first portion of the trail is also widely known as a challenging mountain biking trail.

Today's visitors find Calistoga a mix of new and old: No freeway, no franchise food, tubs full of hot volcanic mud, websites and WIFI. Calistoga's tag line says it all....Hot Springs - Cool Wines - Warm Welcome!

For local information and directions when planning your visit to Calistoga click on www.CalistogaChamber.com or when in town visit the Calistoga Chamber of Commerce located behind the historic Depot.