BENICIA — Its status as a former state capital is part of California lore, but Benicia was also once destined to be called Francisca until Yerba Buena changed its name to San Francisco and the similarity spurred the town’s founder to select another name.
Robert Semple had wanted in 1847 to name the town after Gen. Mariano Vallejo’s wife, Francisca Maria Felipa Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo, and he still did. Semple just choose another of her many names.
The town’s residential and business districts are on its west side with a vibrant waterfront as well as the Benicia State Recreation Area along Southhampton Bay.
Benicia is home to events that range from Arts Benicia and the Benicia Peddlers Fair to The Holy Ghost Parade and the July 3 Torchlight Parade.
Its industrial side includes the Port of Benicia and the town’s largest employer, the Valero Oil Refinery, with its tanks, pipes and stacks that sprawl across a large area alongside Interstate 680.
The town could have been the center of California politics when the state in 1853 declared Benicia as its capital after deciding they were dissatisfied with Vallejo in that role. Lawmakers took over the Benicia City Hall, with its Doric columns and appearance of a Greek temple.
“So Benicia, the memorable ‘city of the Straits,’ ‘the rival emporium of the Pacific wealth and commerce,’ is to be vested with new dignities . . .” the Feb. 5, 1853, Daily Alta Californian reported.
The state Legislature met again in Benicia in 1854. It voted to make Benicia the permanent state capital. Then lawmakers quickly changed their minds when 100 people coming to the session couldn’t find lodgings and had to sleep in saloons. They moved the capital to Sacramento.
Another historical site is the Benicia Arsenal, built in 1849 as an ordnance supply depot. William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant spent time there prior to going on to Civil War fame. Sherman became an admirer of the town.
“That Benicia has the best natural site for a commercial city, I am satisfied, and had half the money and half the labor since bestowed upon San Francisco been expended at Benicia, we should have at this day a city of palaces along the Carquinez Strait,” he wrote in his memoirs.
The arsenal also stabled the U.S. Army’s only Camel Corps that was disbanded in 1863. The Camel Barns, built in 1855, now house the Benicia Historical Museum. Union Troops from the West gathered at the arsenal during the Civil War.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 125 truck convoys were loaded at the arsenal.
Two hundred and fifty Italian and 400 German prisoners of war once resided at the arsenal.
Benicia was almost economically shattered in the 1960s when the arsenal closed, removing its economic foundation, but re-creation of the arsenal land as a successful industrial park that now contains the Valero refinery helped save the town’s economy.
Benicia at a glance
- City Hall: 250 E. L St. 746-4200
- Website: www.ci.benicia.ca.us
- City manager: Lorie Tinfow. Reach at 746-4210, [email protected]
- Mayor: Elizabeth Patterson. Elected in 2003, term expires in 2020. Reach at [email protected]
- Vice mayor: Steve Young. Elected in 2016, term expires in 2020. Reach at [email protected]
- Councilman: Tom Campbell. Elected in 1999, term expires in 2020. Reach at [email protected]
- Councilman: Mark Hughes Elected in 2014, term expires in 2018. Reach at [email protected]
- Councilman: Alan Schwartzman. Elected in 2009, term expires in 2018. Reach at [email protected]
