Vallejo is a city in Solano County, California, on the shores of San Pablo Bay in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the second largest city in the North Bay, with a 2020 census population of 126,090. The city is significant to the Zodiac case as the area near which two of the earliest attacks attributed to the Zodiac Killer occurred — the Lake Herman Road murders just outside the city and the Blue Rock Springs attack within it — and as the jurisdiction of the Vallejo Police Department. The local newspaper that received early Zodiac correspondence, the Vallejo Times-Herald, is based here.
Background
Vallejo is named after Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, a Californio general and statesman, and was founded in 1851 on his Rancho Suscol. It briefly served as California’s state capital from 1852 to 1853 before the government moved to neighboring Benicia, California. The Mare Island Naval Shipyard, founded in 1854, dominated the local economy until its 1996 closure. The area was historically home to the Coast Miwok, Suisunes, and other Patwin peoples.
Geography
The city sits on the southwestern edge of Solano County, where the Napa River becomes the Mare Island Strait and flows into San Pablo Bay. Vallejo borders Benicia, California to the east, American Canyon and the Napa County, California line to the north, the Carquinez Strait to the south, and San Pablo Bay to the west. Several mapped faults, including the active Concord Fault, lie in the vicinity. Blue Rock Springs Park — site of three confirmed Native American sites in the surrounding rock outcrops on Sulphur Springs Mountain — is the namesake area of the nearby Zodiac attack.
Government and recent history
Vallejo operates under a council–manager government. In 2008 the city government filed for bankruptcy; a judge declared it concluded in 2011, though analysts noted unresolved public pension costs. The city has been described in multiple studies as among the most racially and ethnically diverse in the United States.