Alta Heights

I must preface this by letting you know, I grew up in Alta Heights, from age 1-18 (and parents still live here).

Alta Heights is an amazing place to live. While the homes are cottage-ish they are so cute, white picket fences, perfect green lawns, flower lined walk ways and kids playing on bikes. The neighborhood was built in the beginning of the eastern hillside that makes Napa Valley so great for growing grapes. Since the hillside is steep, they built homes into them, and each home has a spectacular view. For some of the homes you can see San Francisco. Each home has its own little unique character, but with love and home depot you can have the most incredible little place. Most homes are between 1000-2000 sqft.

The best park of the area, the walking distance to downtown napa is about 15 minutes. There are private trails all over this mountain where you can take the dogs! There is an elementary school (alta heights elementary) there as well as per-schools (yellow brick road). I personally attended both :)

Overall - I cant wait to move my family back to Alta Heights. While it is a quiet little area, I wouldnt consider it boring... life is what you make of it and we are never boring :)
It is a great area, located lose to everything and have great views! Views! VIEWS!!!

I suppose what gives it a rural feel is the picket fences that row some of the leafy streets and the windblown quality of the streets. It’s very quiet on a weekday here, though I’m sure you hear the kids playing in the yards during the weekends. There are also some newer houses sprinkled in here and there, but mostly it feels like the classic California neighborhood.

The southern end of the neighborhood is bordered by Tulocay Cemetery—which is as old as Napa itself, I think. The northern end of the neighborhood by the East Reservoir is considerably more woody and has the best views of the entire neighborhood and probably some of the best in Napa. Here and to the east as you head into the hills is where you are most likely to find the multi-million dollar homes. There is a beautiful Tuscan Villa up there, for example, which makes you feel as if you have been transported to Italy.

The average home price in the rest of the are--where homes are far more modest--seem to hover around the $600K range though occasionally one or two will drop down to ~$300K. On this part of the neighborhood near the cemetery few homes rise beyond the $1 Mil mark.

The central school here is Alta Heights Elementary, right in the middle of the neighborhood. It is an above average school according to test scores and seems to have strong community involvement as far as I can tell. There are a few churches in the neighborhood as well, including the Napa Korean Seventh Day Adventist Church and on the far northern border of the neighborhood, the Creekside Community Church.

Overall, this area has kind of classic California semi-suburban neighborhood feel of the kind those of us who are Gen-Xers remember from our childhoods. Basically it is the kind of middle class neighborhood you would like to raise kids in.