This article lists the railroads and a timeline of railroad history in Solano County, California.
19 Sep 1907 Northern Electric Railway incorporated at Chico from purchase of several railroads. No railroad in Solano County at time of incorporation.
| City | 1860 | 1870 | 1880 | 1890 | 1900 | 1910 | 1920 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benicia | 1,470 | 1,656 | 2,067 | 2,951 | 2,751 | 2,360 | 2,693 |
| Dixon | N/A | N/A | N/A | 1,082 | 783 | 827 | 926 |
| Elmira | N/A | N/A | 816 | 869 | 717 | 494 | 452 |
| Rio Vista | N/A | 888 | 1,232 | 1,236 | 682 | 884 | 1,104 |
| Vacaville | 1,831 | 1,701 | 1,299 | 2,712 | 1,220 | 1,177 | 1,254 |
| Vallejo | 1,431 | 6,391 | 6,587 | 6,866 | 7,965 | 11,340 | 21,107 |
Fairfield is a city in and the county seat of Solano County, California, in the North Bay sub-region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is generally considered the midpoint between the cities of San Francisco and Sacramento, approximately 40 miles (64 km) from the city center of each city, approximately 40 miles (64 km) from the city center of Oakland, less than 19 miles (31 km) from Napa Valley, 16 miles (26 km) from the Carquinez Bridge, and 14 miles (23 km) from the Benicia Bridge. Fairfield was founded in 1856 by clippership captain Robert H. Waterman, and named after his former hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut.
Solano County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 453,491. The county seat is Fairfield.
San Pablo Bay is a tidal estuary that forms the northern extension of San Francisco Bay in the East Bay and North Bay regions of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California.
The Carquinez Strait is a narrow tidal strait in Northern California. It is part of the tidal estuary of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers as they drain into the San Francisco Bay. The strait is eight miles (13 km) long and connects Suisun Bay, which receives the waters of the combined rivers, with San Pablo Bay, a northern extension of the San Francisco Bay.
The North Bay is a subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States. The largest city is Santa Rosa, which is the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. It is the location of the Napa and Sonoma wine regions, and is the least populous and least urbanized part of the Bay Area. It consists of Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.
The California Pacific Railroad Company was incorporated in 1865 at San Francisco, California as the California Pacific Rail Road Company. It was renamed the California Pacific Railroad Extension Company in the spring of 1869, then renamed the California Pacific Railroad later that same year. Its main railroad from Vallejo to Sacramento was completed six months prior to the May 1869 golden spike ceremony of the Central Pacific/Union Pacific Transcontinental Railway.
The California Northern Railroad is one of several Class III short-line railroad companies owned by Genesee & Wyoming, Inc. It operates over Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) tracks under a long-term lease.
The Western Railway Museum, in Solano County, California is located on Highway 12 between Rio Vista and Suisun. The museum is built along the former mainline of the Sacramento Northern Railway. Their collection focuses on trolleys, as it is primarily a museum of interurban transit equipment.
Area code 707 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the northwestern part of the U.S. state of California. It was created by a split of area code 415 on March 1, 1959. It serves part of the northern San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the North Coast. Major cities in the area code include Napa, Sebastopol, Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield, Santa Rosa, Windsor, Healdsburg, Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Fort Bragg, Rio Vista, Crescent City, Eureka, Clearlake, Vacaville, Dixon, and Ukiah.
The Sacramento Northern Railway was a 183-mile (295 km) electric interurban railway that connected Chico in northern California with Oakland via the California capital, Sacramento. In its operation it ran directly on the streets of Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, Chico, and Woodland and ran interurban passenger service until 1941 and freight service into the 1960s.
The Vaca Valley and Clear Lake Railroad was a standard gauge railroad that operated at Vacaville, California in the late 19th century. The Vaca Valley Railroad was incorporated on April 12, 1869 to run a branch from the mainline of the California Pacific Railroad at Elmira to Rumsey.
Rancho Suscol was an 84,000-acre (340 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Napa County, California and Solano County, California given in 1843 by governor Manuel Micheltorena to General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. In a significant land law decision, the land claim was rejected by the US Supreme Court in 1862. Rancho Suscol extended from Rancho Petaluma on the west, south down to the San Francisco Bay and Mare Island and Carquinez Strait, and then to Rancho Suisun on the east. It included present day cities of Vallejo and Benicia.
The San Francisco, Napa and Calistoga Railway, later briefly reorganized as the San Francisco and Napa Valley Railroad, was an electric interurban railroad in the U.S. state of California.
The Martinez subdivision is a Union Pacific railway line which runs from Roseville, California to Oakland, California. It is informally referred to as the Cal-P line, after the original California Pacific Railroad, who constructed the line from Sacramento to Suisun and Fairfield. The line is entirely double-tracked including bridges, and features extensive sidings.
The Vaca Mountains are a mountain range in Napa and Solano Counties, California that is one of the California Coast Ranges. They represent the easternmost of the Inner Coast Ranges in north−central California, and divide the Suisun Valley on their west, from the Sacramento Valley on their east.
The Western Pacific Railroad (1862-1870) was formed in 1862 to build a railroad from Sacramento, California, to the San Francisco Bay, the westernmost portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. After the completion of the railroad from Sacramento to Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, and then the Oakland Pier on November 8, 1869, which was the Pacific coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad was absorbed in 1870 into the Central Pacific Railroad.
Maine Prairie is an unincorporated community located in Solano County, California east of Elmira, California on the Maine Prairie Slough at latitude 38.308 and longitude -121.759. The elevation is 7 feet (2.1 m). Maine Prairie appears on the Dozier U.S. Geological Survey Map.
The Howell Mountains, which are also known as the Mt. George Range, are one of the California Coast Ranges. They divide the Suisun Valley on the east side, from Napa Valley on the west. Historically the southern part of the range has been referred to as both the Sierra de Suscol and as the Sierra de Napa.
The Vallejo and Northern Railroad was a proposed 58.15-mile (93.58 km) interurban line between Vallejo and West Sacramento, California. Terminal sites were purchased in Fairfield, Suisun, Vacaville, and Vallejo, California; but the 1906 San Francisco earthquake temporarily prevented further construction. The company had become a subsidiary of the Sacramento Northern Railway predecessor Northern Electric Railway by the time construction resumed. A single tram lettered Vallejo & Northern # 1 operated in downtown Sacramento from 15 November 1911 until 1914. Construction of what would become the Sacramento Northern Willotta branch began in 1911; and rails were laid in 1913. A steam train operated over track from a dock on Suisun Bay toward Fairfield from February until the line was electrified in June. Northern Electric combination cars numbered 103, 104 and 22 offered passenger service over this isolated branch until passenger service was abandoned in 1926. Motor #701 pulled carloads of freight transferred from barges and shallow-draft steamboats at Suisun. Western Pacific Railroad proposed extending the Willotta branch of their Sacramento Northern subsidiary through Jamison Canyon to connect with the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad (P&SR) as late as 1932, but the Great Depression and Northwestern Pacific Railroad purchase of the P&SR prevented such expansion. The Willotta branch was relocated during construction of Travis Air Force Base in 1942, and diesel locomotives replaced electric operation in 1947.
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