It is amazing what you can discover about Benicia when you least expect it. You can take a journey from the past into the future. 

Let me explain. The other day, I rode the Amtrak from Martinez to Sacramento and spent a pleasant couple of hours in the California State Railroad Museum. A museum docent dressed in an old-time conductor’s cap and suit led a group of us on a tour of the exhibits and train cars and after that, I wandered around on my own. 

This is where I stumbled onto a glass-enclosed display about Benicia’s past: the steamship known as the Solano Ferry. The Solano was a beast; the largest ferry in the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when it made its runs back and forth between Benicia and Port  Costa. 

Get this: the 400-foot-long Solano was big enough and wide enough and strong enough to carry two full trains consisting of 48 freight cars on its mile-long trip across the Carquinez. It could make these runs, if needed, multiple times in a day. It also carried automobiles and passengers wishing to travel to Oakland and San Francisco, or if they were headed east, to  Sacramento and beyond. 

A man named Arthur Brown designed the ferry. He also engineered huge slips at the foot of First Street that allowed the train cars to be loaded on and off safely.

Dozens of men who lived in Benicia and Port Costa worked the ferry service. 

I learned all this from the display whose centerpiece was a beautiful and super-detailed  HO scale model of the Solano that was built by Bill Rubarth, Thomas Rubarth, and Jim Turner. 

They devoted 15 years to the project. HO scale means that it was constructed to the exact specifications of the original ship, at 1/87th its size.  

Two years ago the threesome donated their masterpiece to the railroad museum, where others could enjoy it. Fascinated by this, I visited the Museum of History, Benicia to see what they might have on the old Solano. Zoe Urban, an administrative coordinator, welcomed me in and pointed out the second floor display panels that told how the ferry went out of business in  1930 after they built the railroad bridge across the strait.  

During this time I had a chat with David Batchelor, the chair of the Benicia Community  Foundation, who is an active volunteer in community affairs. He is the one who is lifting this whole ferry business out of the distant past and attempting to place it into a possible future for the City.

He and others, including City staff, envision a “water taxi” that would potentially operate between Benicia and the Vallejo ferry terminal. The Vallejo ferry currently makes daily cross-bay runs back and forth between San Francisco. 

“A water taxi service between Benicia Marina and Vallejo Ferry would provide a scenic,  efficient transportation option, connecting residents to Vallejo’s ferry service and beyond,” 

Batchelor wrote me in an email after our talk. “Given our current secure docking facilities with  added suitable parking, this service could boost tourism, reduce road congestion, and help  support the marina’s sustainability.”