Veterans Home of California

Address 100 California Drive, Yountville

The Veterans Home occupies the southern end of Yountville and is the oldest institution in town. Its grounds — landscaped lawns, century-old palms, and a striking white chapel — give the village an unusual quasi-public space that you can walk through freely. The Lincoln Theater on the grounds hosts the Napa Valley Symphony's resident concerts and a worthwhile film and music programme.

The Yountville Veterans Cemetery, at the western edge of the home, is the resting place of veterans from every American war from the Civil War onward; the rows of identical white markers run almost to the freeway. A quiet, unexpected stop in a town otherwise about food.

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The Veterans Home was founded in 1884 by veterans of the Mexican-American and Civil Wars, who pooled their funds to buy 910 acres in the valley. It is now one of the largest such facilities in the country, with around a thousand residents, and the campus includes a working farm, a chapel, a cemetery, and the Lincoln Theater concert hall.

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