25
Meanwhile, another German immigrant, Jacob Beringer, purchased the old Hudson Ranch just
outside St. Helena, where he planted a vineyard and built a winery. In 1877 he hired 100 Chinese
laborers to begin building his wine tunnels at a dollar a day—25 cents more than they had
earned working for the railroad. With pick and shovel they excavated long tunnels. This work was
dirty, difficult and dangerous. An unrelenting rain of falling dirt had to be carried out by hand in
woven baskets.
More Chinese found work in Napa Valley digging caves and building rock walls, which are still
standing today. Unemployed and disgruntled white men claimed that the Chinese were taking
their jobs away, unwilling to admit that the Chinese did work they found unbearable. As contention
continued to grow, the State Legislature passed a number of restrictive acts, and in 1882 the U.S.
Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese laborers from entering the
states. The loss of the Chinese labor force signaled the end of cave building in Napa Valley, and by
the 1890s no new caves were being created. The ensuing years brought phylloxera and Prohibition,
and many of the old wineries closed and their facilities fell into disrepair and finally abandonment.
The notion of digging a wine cave seemed to vanish.
