Solano, The Way It Was

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Cityhood of Suisun petitioned

More autonomy was achieved 16 years later in 1884

In my last column I talked about nearby Cordelia receiving a post office in 1865 because it was on the stage route from Benicia to Sacramento and Suisun received its mail from that source until receiving its own post office in 1887.

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Sunday, February 17, 2008

Cattle boom of 1850s short-lived in Solano

Seven years of profit flooded with losses

In my last column, Luzena Stanley Wilson described her experiences of riding across the hills of Solano County around 1851 to visit her Wolfskill neighbors at Putah Creek and encountering the vast herds of grazing black Spanish steers.

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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Bog was barrier between two cities

Swamp made for tricky travel

I left off in my last column noting that when Fairfield became the County Seat in 1858, Fairfield was still struggling to become the more prominent city, even though it had the increased influence of being the county seat. Suisun was already an important shipping port and business community, and many of the officials made their home in Suisun rather than Fairfield.

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Sunday, February 03, 2008

A mid 1830s ride could be just plain dangerous

Spanish cattle posed a threat to mother, kids

First Spanish missionaries and later Spanish landowners such as the Vaca, Pena and Armijo families acquired vast acreage of Northern California land to raise cattle, namely black steers.

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