Benicia is a waterside city in Solano County, California, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It served as the capital of California for nearly thirteen months from 1853 to 1854. The population was 26,997 at the 2010 United States Census. The city is located along the north bank of the Carquinez Strait. Benicia is just east of Vallejo and across the strait from Martinez.
Interstate 680 (I-680) is a north–south auxiliary Interstate Highway in Northern California. It curves around the eastern cities of the San Francisco Bay Area from San Jose to I-80 at Fairfield, bypassing cities along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay such as Oakland and Richmond while serving others more inland such as Pleasanton and Concord.
Julia Morgan was an American architect and engineer. She designed more than 700 buildings in California during a long and prolific career. She is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.
George Sterling was an American writer based in the San Francisco, California Bay Area and Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was considered a prominent poet and playwright and proponent of Bohemianism during the first quarter of the twentieth century. His work was admired by writers as diverse as Ambrose Bierce, Robinson Jeffers, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Clark Ashton Smith.
Susan Tolman Mills was the co-founder of Mills College.
Xavier Timoteo Martínez was a California artist active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a well-known bohemian figure in San Francisco, the East Bay, and the Monterey Peninsula and one of the co-founders of two California artists' organizations and an art gallery. He painted in a tonalist style and also produced monotypes, etchings, and silverpoint.
Mary Louise Comingore, known professionally as Dorothy Comingore, was an American film actress. She starred as Susan Alexander Kane in Citizen Kane (1941), the critically acclaimed debut film of Orson Welles. In earlier films she was credited as Linda Winters, and she had appeared on the stage as Kay Winters. Her career ended when she was caught in the Hollywood blacklist. She declined to answer questions when she was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952.
William Wallace Barbour Sheldon, commonly known as Wallace, was an architectural engineer and pioneer of California, a leading figure of the engineering history of the California coast.
Winifred Sweet Black Bonfils was an American reporter and columnist, under the pen name Annie Laurie, a reference to her mother's favorite lullaby. She also wrote under the name Winifred Black.
Constance Lindsay Skinner was a Canadian writer, critic, historian and editor best known for having conceived the Rivers of America Series for the publisher Farrar & Rinehart.
Frances Mary Frost was an American poet, novelist, and children's writer. She was the mother of poet Paul Blackburn.
Erika Mailman is an American author and journalist. Mailman was born in the United States, growing up in Vermont and attending both Colby College and the University of Arizona, Tucson. She later began writing a column for the Montclarion edition of the Contra Costa Times. She has lived in Oakland, California for the last 7 years. She has taught at Chabot College in Hayward, California.
Ednah Robinson Aiken was an American writer, editor, clubwoman, and playwright, based in the San Francisco Bay area.
Mary Eunice McCarthy was an American screenwriter, playwright, journalist and author, perhaps best known today as the screenwriter of, and driving force behind, the biopic Sister Kenny (1946).
Kate M. Foley was an American librarian and advocate for blind literacy, based in San Francisco, California.
Maxine Dunlap Bennett, was an American aviator. She was the first licensed woman glider pilot and first woman glider club president in the United States. She flew her record-setting glider rating qualification flight over the sand dunes of Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California, on April 28, 1929, for a distance of 990 ft (300 m) and a flight duration of 50 seconds, exceeding the then-required minimum of 30 seconds, to obtain her Glider flying certificate.
Doña Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo (1815-1891) was a Californio pioneer. A member of the Carrillo family of California, Carrillo was the wife of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Carrillo was an early settler of Sonoma, California, the town founded by her husband. She survived the Bear Flag Rebellion and went on to oversee the Vallejo estate, Lachryma Montis, until her death in 1891. The city of Benicia, California is named after her.
Victoria Endicott Lincoln Lowe, who wrote under the name Victoria Lincoln, was an American novelist, biographer, and true crime writer. Her best known novel, February Hill (1934), was adapted for stage and screen. She won the Edgar Award for best fact crime book for her A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight.
Cleo Theodora Damianakes, nom de plume Cleon or Cleonike, was an American etcher, painter, and illustrator. She was widely known for designing dust jackets for Lost Generation writers in the 1920s and early 1930s, including cover art for the first editions of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald's All the Sad Young Men, which were published by Scribners. Other authors she designed covers for included novelists such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Conrad Aiken, John Galsworthy, and Arthur B. Reeve.
Ina Perham Story was an American painter and interior decorator. Perham was known for her contributions to the Californian art scene with her still life, landscape, and portrait works. In the 1920s she was a member of the Monterey Group of artists..
