Gamble Family Vineyards / Photo by Sarah Risk
When Mary Ann McGuire landed in Napa Valley as a 20-year-old in 1960, she felt a special connection to the area.
“We saw it as a bountiful garden,” she says. “I felt this sense of power that came from the land…For me, it carried a spiritual imprint that a mother feels towards a child that you want to protect.”
For her first few years in the Valley, McGuire, who had moved to the region with her new husband, cattle rancher George Gamble, saw no reason to act on that protective instinct.
But in the mid-60s, California entered an era of development. And as more agricultural acreage gave way to subdivisions and shopping centers, the grape growers, farmers, ranchers and residents of Napa County began to feel the pressure of what that development might mean for the region.