Vallejo was California's capital until lawmakers found no capitol building
In 1851 the new state of California named Vallejo its capital, and legislators arrived the following year. There was one problem: the promised capitol building had never been built. When they returned in 1853, they stayed only about a month, long enough to vote to move the seat of government to neighbouring Benicia.
Both towns carry the same family's name. Vallejo honours Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, a Californio general who had received the huge Rancho Suscol land grant from the Mexican governor in 1843 and founded the pueblo of Sonoma in 1836. Benicia was named after his wife. Long before any of this, the land belonged to Coast Miwok, Suisunes and other Patwin peoples, and three confirmed Native American sites survive in the hills above Blue Rock Springs Park.
The general's fortunes were a parable of the era. During the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846, American settlers rebelling against Mexican rule locked him up at Sutter's Fort. Yet he broadly welcomed annexation by the United States, served at the 1849 state constitutional convention and became an Indian agent. Legal challenges to his land titles later shrank his ranch from 250,000 acres to about 300, and he died in 1890 doubting whether welcoming the Americans had been wise. The city's real founder was arguably his son-in-law John Frisbie, whose surveyor named east-west streets after states and north-south ones after California counties.
Losing the capital might have finished the town, but in 1854 the federal government opened the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, which shaped Vallejo's economy until the turn of the twenty-first century and became a key submarine yard in the Second World War. Victorian and Craftsman houses still line downtown streets.
More recently Vallejo made headlines for money trouble. In May 2008 its council voted unanimously for bankruptcy, then the largest California city to do so, with public safety pay and benefits said to consume at least 80 percent of the general fund. The city of about 126,000 sits where the Napa River meets San Pablo Bay.
Source: Vallejo, California
