Benicia: A Cradle of California History

I knew absolutely nothing about the small city of Benicia, CA (population 20,000) when I showed up there a couple weeks ago. I have been in the process of creating a series of linoleum block prints for my forthcoming book and needed a studio with a public printing press to produce them. Despite being an hour-and-a-half’s drive from my home Santa Cruz, the one in Benicia seemed like it would be my best option. So, I made the trek.

The studio was terrific—but I had expected that, based on the photos I had seen and the communications I’d had with the woman who manages it. What I wasn’t expecting was that I’d be charmed by its community.

Benicia’s slogan is “A Great Day by the Bay.” This is a reference to its location on the Carquinez Strait, the pinch point between the Suisun and San Pablo Bays. These two “mini-bays” are fed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, two of California’s largest waterways, and these bays both flow into the larger San Francisco Bay.

The city’s geographic position inspired its founding in 1847. Its first European-American resident, Robert Semple, saw the spot’s potential and convinced General Vallejo to sell a parcel of land to him, with the understanding that it would be named after Vallejo’s wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo (“Francisca” was too close to “Francisco,”—as in “San Francisco,” so they opted to use her second name). The price for the five mile by one mile parcel was $100.

Soon thereafter, Semple began running a ferry across the Carquinez Strait. The California gold rush was just getting underway then, and traffic from the Bay Area to the Sierra foothills enabled him to make $50 per day—an amazing return on that initial investment— shuttling people, horses, and carts over the water. Before long, he was also printing California’s first newspaper.

By 1850, there were 100 homes in Benicia, and a shipping company had set up shop at the port. In the same year, the west coast’s first arsenal and munitions depot—which still stands and is referred to locally as “the clock tower”—was constructed just above it.

In 1852, Benicia became the capitol of the state of California for a little over a year. The capitol building also still stands, just off the town’s main street.

In 1862, President Lincoln authorized the construction of a military compound up by the arsenal. At least twenty of those original buildings are still in use, including the Commandant’s House, a huge Neo-Georgian mansion that now houses the offices and galleries of Arts Benicia—the organization that runs the printmaking studio where I have been working.

The studio isn’t in this building; it occupies space amongst the old industrial port structures down by the water, along with a number of other workshops and small businesses.

Those buildings became especially important in 1879, when the Central Pacific Railroad came to Benicia.

At the port, entire trains (24-car passenger trains or 48-car freight trains) were loaded onto the four parallel tracks of a 425-foot ferry called the Solano and transported across the strait. The Solano was the largest ferry in the world for 35 years and a key link in the west coast’s transportation system.

Progress ensued, as it does. In 1930, the railroad was rerouted through Martinez, the city just across the strait, and Benicia soon fell on tough times. The arsenal also closed.

But that dip didn’t last for long. As the Bay Area’s cities grew, so did the need for bedroom communities. When a vehicle bridge was built over the strait in 1962, Benicia became a white collar suburb. The arsenal became an industrial park, and the heart of the city was reborn into a lovely downtown with well-kept historic buildings.

That downtown now houses food options ranging from an 1850’s-era hotel bar to a Burmese restaurant and everything in between. There’s a great high-end bakery, a community garden, a comic book shop, and a bunch of clothing and home goods stores.

And there’s art. A big mural decorates the side of one building, and a series of tile inlays adorn the sidewalks.

Multiple galleries line the main street, and more sit out in the former port zone. There’s enough art that the city hosts an open studios weekend, during which artists open their spaces to the public both to sell their work and to demonstrate how it’s made.

The studio I’ve been visiting is participating in the weekend’s festivities, and they’ve asked me to have a table there. I think I’m going to gather up some of my prints and join them. In my very small way, I suppose it will allow me to be a part of this city’s ongoing evolution.