Benicia is a city in Solano County, California, situated on the north bank of the Carquinez Strait within the North Bay portion of the San Francisco Bay Area. It lies just east of Vallejo and sits across the strait from Martinez. The 2020 U.S. census recorded a population of 27,131.
The city was founded on May 19, 1847, by Dr. Robert Semple, Thomas O. Larkin, and General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo on land Vallejo had donated in December 1846. It was named for Vallejo’s wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. Benicia served briefly as California’s state capital, with its city hall functioning as the capitol from February 11, 1853, to February 25, 1854, before the legislature moved to Sacramento. Benicia became one of the first incorporated cities in California in March 1850 and was the original county seat of Solano County until the seat moved to Fairfield in 1858.
Relevance to the Zodiac case
This Wikipedia article is a general municipal entry and does not itself discuss the Zodiac case. Benicia is geographically significant to the case because the Lake Herman Road murders of David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen occurred on a rural road near the city, in the same Solano County area that saw early attacks attributed to the Zodiac Killer.