While the Benicia we know is a quiet commuter town, with a quaint downtown and beautiful views of the bay, the city hasn’t always been a sleepy suburbia. From hosting military operations, to housing famous figures, to even being the state capitol, Benicia has seen a lot- and it has the colorful history to prove it! Read on, and you might just learn a few new facts about our unique little city.

1. Benicia was originally going to be named “Francisca” after General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. However, once the general found out that the former city of Yerba Buena was adopting the new title, “San Francisco,” he opted for her second name.

2. Benicia served as the third capital of California for a little over a year (1853 to 1854), before the capital moved to its now current location in Sacramento.
3. Triumphant Union General Captain and former President Ulysses S. Grant was quartered in the Benicia Barracks in 1852 while traveling with the 4th Infantry Regiment. According to popular legend, Grant was reprimanded for excessive drinking and misconduct while in Benicia.

4. In 1889, a barge off the coast of Benicia housed a legendary prize fight between professional boxers James J. Corbett and Joe Choynski that lasted 28 rounds!

5. In the 1850s and 1860s, the military experimented with using camels as pack animals. When the project was scrapped, the remaining camels were sent to the Benicia Arsenal to be auctioned off to the public.

6. Renowned shipbuilder Matthew Turner created the Matthew Turner Shipyard in in 1883 after moving from San Francisco to Benicia. As a result, Benicia became an important shipping site. Of the 228 sailing vessels Matthew Turner launched (more than any other man in America), 154 were built in Benicia.

7. Famous author Jack London frequented the docks of Benicia, and the adventures he had while spending time in the town appear in two of his works, “Tales of the Fish Patrol” and “John Barleycorn.”

8. The son of a former Benicia commanding officer, Stephen Vincent Benet resided in the small town from 1905 to 1911, when he was sent off to boarding school at the age of 10. Benet went on to become a famous poet and author. In 1929, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his narrative poem about the Civil War, “John Brown’s Body.”

9. The infamous Zodiac Killer made his first appearance in Benicia, killing a teenage couple on Lake Herman Road in 1968. These murders were the first of a string of violent crimes that spanned several years and cities in the Bay Area. The identity of the Zodiac Killer remains a mystery.

10. St. Dominic’s Cemetery in Benicia is home to the grave of Maria Concepción Argüello, the beautiful daughter of a former governor of San Francisco that found herself in the midst of an unlikely love story. When Concepción was just 15 years old, she fell in love with 42 year old Russian sea captain Nikolai Rezanov. The two were engaged immediately, but their marriage was postponed so Rezanov could complete his diplomatic mission. He died while on his expedition, but Concepción supposedly never found out. She remained faithful to her missing fiancé, never marrying and eventually becoming a nun. Their love story is depicted in a portrait in the Post Interfaith Chapel in San Francisco, in the chamber musical “Viva Concha! Rose of the Presidio” by composer Candance Forest, and in the Russian rock-opera “Junos and Avos.”
Jasmine Weis is a senior at Benicia High School.

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