With the addition of a new restaurant coming soon to Benicia’s Tannery building at the foot of First Street, new views have opened up at the building’s rear. This newest section of the waterfront trail now extends from Sailor Jacks Restaurant to behind the Tannery building up to Phil Joy’s boatyard, offering spectacular vistas of the Carquinez Bridge and Carquinez Strait that were previously unavailable.  The eight-foot wide segment of the path is part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, a 550-mile continuous loop tracing the ridgeline above San Francisco Bay.

Jerry Bowles

Bike path along the Benicia Waterfront

Along with City building permits, the Tannery’s owner, Joe Lopez, was required to obtain permits from the Army Corp of Engineers, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC.)  For an interactive map for the Bay Area Ridge Trail, visit ridgetrail.org/interactive_map/&Itemid=99/.