VACAVILLE — The city’s roots reach back to 1892 but like much of California it was after World War II that Vacaville boomed.
Population now puts the municipality at third in Solano County, behind Vallejo and Fairfield, although many Vacaville residents would say that’s a contest they’re not entering.
Rather than look at numbers, Vacaville’s boosters say its benefits include a thriving downtown and a quality of life unmatched in Solano County.
Long known as the home of the Nut Tree, the restaurant and shops along Interstate 80, Vacaville saw the retail establishment close in 1996 but reopen as a reborn commercial center in 2009.
Vacaville is not a city stuck in the past but many residents are sweet on the old Nut Tree and what it represents.
When a sign along Interstate 80 marking the former business was taken down in March 2015, devotees of the old Nut Tree were there to mourn and memorialize the moment.
Shawn Lum, executive director of the Vacaville Museum, was there to help preserve two of the 12-ton panels of the 72-foot-tall sign that marked the site of the Nut Tree restaurant, the historic site where a San Francisco mayor was once said – erroneously he insisted – to have met with the Mafia.
“I wish it wasn’t happening,” said Lum, who handed out final paychecks when the Nut Tree closed in 1996 – and said in March that dismantling of the restaurant sign wasn’t as traumatic as the Nut Tree’s end.
Still, the half-century-old sign represented a part of what made Vacaville, Lum said, a monument of cement and crushed glass that took two years to build – and a day to take down, panel by panel.
“It was, for want of a better term, like looking at Disneyland,” Lum said of the Nut Tree and the freeway sign that was work of Don Birrell, the late design director for the Nut Tree.
A decade-old development agreement called for the sign’s removal and a Saks Fifth Avenue outlet is planned for the property where Lum once worked as human resources manager for the restaurant.
The Nut Tree was a key part of California, the place where Lake Tahoe travelers stopped and the site, Look magazine said in an erroneous 1969 article, of a meeting where Joseph Alioto, as an attorney and banker, set up loans for a trucking company owned by Mafia enforcer Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno.
Alioto sued the magazine and won $12.5 million. He said he learned the Nixon administration, eager to take out the political rival it saw in the San Francisco mayor, was behind the Look magazine article.
The Nut Tree, Lum said, was for decades the successful business of a family of entrepreneurs. Over time, though, it became like the Titanic, she said.
“It was big. It was grand. It was expensive,” Lum said. “The Nut Tree was too big to change. It wasn’t nimble enough.”
Solano County Supervisor John Vasquez saw the sign as an icon and he was at the site to secure one of the six panels for history. “I want to leave it right where it’s at,” he said. But plans were to haul the parts of the sign off the property, Vasquez said.
Richard Rico former owner and publisher of the Vacaville Reporter, spoke at the site about how “people of my generation pretty much grew up with the Nut Tree.”
“It’s sad and nostalgic,” he said of the sign’s end – “the last vestige of what we knew as the Nut Tree.”
Now Vacaville is better know as the home to life-science companies that include Genentech, Alza and Chiron.
Reach Ryan McCarthy at 427-6935 or [email protected].
Vacaville at a glance
City Hall: 650 Merchant St.
Website: www.cityofvacaville.com
City manager: Laura Kuhn. Reach at 449-5100, [email protected]
Mayor: Len Augustine. Elected in 2014, term expires in 2018. He previously served two terms as mayor. Reach at [email protected]
Vice Mayor: Curtis Hunt. Appointed in 2007. Elected in 2010. Term expires in 2018. Reach at [email protected]
Councilwoman: Dilenna Harris. Elected in 2008. Term expires in 2016. Reach at [email protected].
Councilman: Mitch Mashburn. Elected in 2010. Term expires in 2018. Reach at [email protected]
Councilman: Ron Rowlett. Elected in 2008. Term expires in 2016. Reach at [email protected]
