By Father Thomas Hayes

EVERY CITY AND TOWN HAS A “MAIN STREET” OR A “FIRST STREET.” Very often Oak is the favorite and the most popular. Benicia does have its First Street. There is an Oak Street but that is in the old Arsenal territory.

When Jasper O’Farrell was engaged by Benicia’s founders to lay out a street plan for this, the first city in California founded by Americans and not stemming from a mission or presidio, this engineer who also laid out the original street plan for San Francisco somewhat unimaginatively devised a roughly north-south and east-west grid, with the former given numbers for names and the latter given letters. So it was that the original streets of Benicia were, to give an example, “Fifth and I” or First and J.” I do not know whether “East” or “West” was in the original grid, but for sure there was no “north” or “south,” for that would have given streets in either the hills or in the water.
Interestingly enough, however, there were actually lots laid out in the water — and this before global warming!

I do know that my family settled first in what Benicians popularly called “the west end” at West Fifth and I streets. They soon moved to the “east end” at East Third and I, and when we were growing up my brothers and I considered ourselves part of the “Bottle Hill” gang (if there were such in those days). That spot was little more than a barren hillock that overlooked the Yuba Manufacturing Company down along the shoreline bordering the Carquinez Strait, with a panoramic view of Mount Diablo rising to the east. Perhaps it is superfluous to say a “barren” hillock, as virtually all of Benicia stretching from the hills and the Arsenal holdings down to the shore was treeless, marked by nothing but the grassy, rolling hills leading down to the shoreline.The American writer and poet Stephen Vincent Benet vividly describes this scene from his childhood days, when his father served in the United States Army at the Benicia Arsenal at the turn of the century.

The prolific author of “John Brown’s Body” and “The Devil and Daniel Webster” gives us a picture of what Benicia must have looked like in those early days. I imagine it as similar to the scene along the shore of upper Suisun Bay, where the Sacramento River prepares to join with the San Joaquin near Collinsville to flow ultimately through the Carquinez Strait to San Francisco Bay, making its inexorable way into the vast Pacific.

I title this episode in my tale of Benicia “First street — an equivocal thoroughfare” for a good reason. At the northern end of First Street, tucked under the lower hills that were part of the southern end of the Vaca Mountain range — an offshoot of the Coast Range that marks the topography of California north to south — there arrived in 1854 when Benicia was only seven years in existence a group of religious women who were part of the Dominican Order (Order of Preachers) of the Catholic Church. Though few in number they came to this far west of the United States when the newly named Archbishop of San Francisco, Joseph Sadoc Alemany O.P., was named archbishop of the new Archdiocese of San Francisco (1854), a vast area of the West extending from the Oregon border and including all of northern California as far south as Monterey and eastward through Utah. A Dominican Order missionary priest and native of Spain who had been laboring in the eastern U.S., particularly Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, Alemany had previously been named bishop of Monterey (California) in 1850 in the aftermath of the American victory in the war with Mexico (1846-48).

Momentous events marked those years in lightning fashion: discovery of gold; the flush of enthusiasm and sense of “Manifest Destiny” as the young nation flexed its muscles; the turmoil following the flood of gold seekers, adventurers and entrepreneurs who poured into the new state of California, admitted into the Union in 1850 — and as a non-slavery state. The fledgling Dominican Sisters community moved to Benicia and established Saint Catherine’s Convent (Santa Catalina) with a school in Benicia, a city showing promise as a potential “metropolis,” having provided a building for the State Capitol and actually serving as the “capital” in that year 1854.

Benicia was filled with great expectations. In fact the literature of the day spoke of Benicia as “The Athens of the West” because of the educational foundations that were springing up. Several institutions of learning take their origins from those days — Mills College, now in Oakland Saint Augustine College, Saint Mary’s (which no longer exists), and from that convent of Dominican Sisters came into being the Dominican College of San Rafael (1889). With the growing reputation for learning and culture in those wild days of the “49ers,” several writers would remark on the educational environment of Benicia. Bret Harte, for example, would write : “She spoke French with a true Benicia (?) accent.”

One of the early Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine’s was Maria Concepcion Arguello, daughter of the 10th Spanish/Mexican governor of California. Born sometime toward the end of the 18th century, she became engaged to Russian Count Rezanov, who had come to San Francisco in 1806 on a diplomatic mission for the czar. He returned to Russia to get permission to marry but died in the course of his journey through Siberia. Maria Concepcion waited for her love to return, spending her time in works of charity as a Franciscan tertiary. With the arrival of Bishop Alemany and the Dominicans to Monterey, she made her religious vows in 1851, and when the community relocated to Benicia, Sister Dominica (her religious name as a member of that pioneering group) went with them. She died in 1854 and is buried in Saint Dominic Cemetery, Benicia, with her Sisters.

It was the very stuff of romantic legend — the first native Californian to become a nun and her beloved Nicolai for whom she waited for almost 50 years — and it has been the subject of many writers’ imaginations, and most recently a source of great interest to Russian audiences. I personally escorted a delegation from Moscow TV when they brought a crew of film writers to Benicia to work on a story about the Russian count and Spanish senorita/nun. Her grave, recognized by the California Historical Society, is the site of many pilgrimages.

Mother Joseph Dillon was another key member of this Saint Catherine’s community. She led her religious congregations through the very difficult financial times that affected the whole country in the 1870s. The community was kept alive largely through her efforts. Born in Ireland in 1834, she was brought to California by her father Joseph Dillon, who prospered and developed a large acreage between Benicia and Vallejo on the shores of Southampton Bay. That property, known as Dillon Point, nearly became the bridgehead for the eventual Carquinez Bridge. It is currently a prominent residential area. Interestingly enough, on his death Dillon gave the property to the Dominican Fathers.

Saint Catherine’s also contributed to the educational life of Benicia. Saint Catherine’s Academy taught both the Benician “day scholars” and boarders, non-Catholics, as well, among them the future wife of Irving Berlin. It was with great sadness and a loss to the community when changing times forced the Sisters to close convent and academy in 1958. The property eventually sold and developed into what is now the Solano Square Shopping Center. All that remains of the great legacy is a small marker at the juncture of Military West and First Street across from City Park.

The southern end of First Street is another story and presents quite a contrast. Since it is adjacent to the water, this terminus of Benicia’s “Main Street” was from the very beginning a bustling, hustling scene of commerce and activity of all kinds. The railroad came after 1862 and this emphasized and highlighted the activities “at the end of First Street.” With the transcontinental railroad creating a whole new empire of business, travel and every kind of commercial enterprise, the link between east and west of this nation gave the name “United States” a new meaning. In the aftermath of a terrible Civil War, the country desperately needed unifying factors. The railroad that brought the two coasts together did much to advance the cause.

But there was a problem. How to get across the Carquinez Straits? A locomotive and its appendages cannot float. Easily solved. Recourse was had to the very means by which the first travellers and traders had crossed the straits: ferry boats. Two great train ferries were built — the Solano and the Contra Costa. For more than 50 years not an individual, not the president of the United States nor a common traveller, could finish the journey without passing through the lower part of Benicia’s First Street (unless they wanted to make a tortuous roundabout through the countryside —and even then they would need the ferry system to get to San Francisco!)

The mind boggles to think of the stories that could be told just waiting at the bottom of First Street to get across to the other side. How long was the wait? What did the passengers do? I don’t know! This prompts me to do further research into the Solano and Contra Costa ferry boats, which I intend to do. Most of the individuals who served on the boats are long gone from us, but I hope to contact some descendants who might fill in the missing pieces.

Father Thomas Hayes, O.P., is a former pastoral associate at St. Dominic’s Church in Benicia. He lives in San Francisco.

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