The Pope Street Bridge
Near St. Helena, California
Where Pope Street crosses the Napa River stands one of the quiet treasures of Saint Helena, the Pope Street Bridge, the oldest stone bridge in Napa County. It was built in eighteen ninety four by a stonemason named Pithie, using stone hauled from a local quarry on Monticello Road. The triple arch bridge stretches about one hundred seventy five feet across the river and cost fourteen thousand five hundred dollars to build, a substantial sum at the time.
It was designed for horse drawn wagons, but it has carried automobile traffic for more than a century, and it came through the great San Francisco earthquake of nineteen oh six without damage. Napa County was once famous for its stone bridges, the handiwork of skilled masons, many of them Italian immigrants, who also raised the stone winery cellars and the storefronts along Main Street. The same craft that built Beringer and Greystone built these bridges.
The Pope Street Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy two. Pause a moment as you cross it. Beneath your wheels is more than a century of stonework, still standing, still carrying the valley's traffic, a small monument to the patient craftsmanship that shaped this town.
