The most fulfilling encounters we have in the journey of this rehabilitation is meeting local craftsmen, artists and neighbors.
Ira Yaeger is one prominent artist who lives between Calistoga, California and Santa Fe, New Mexico and whose vivid sketches of Wappo Indians remind us of the indigenous people that were the inhabitants of Calistoga.
The Wappo lived around present-day Calistoga between 500 and 5,000 years, and called the land Nilektsonoma, or “Chicken Hawk Place,” and Tu La Halusi, “a beautiful land.”Padre José Altimura, the founder of Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, arrived in the Napa Valley in 1823. He named the region Agua Caliente, or “hot water,” in reference to the hot springs that would later play an important role in Calistoga’s evolution. After Mexican independence and the secularization of the missions, the Mexican government began giving away large swaths of land to prominent citizens.
