Nocturne Revenant
a city in ruins
splashes of sidewalk
say tonight is eons
into 'history'
what with reflections
in every puddle from here
to Vallejo announcing
secret geometries of survival—
the path of the bumble bee
coyote song & scent
the warring wind & mesas...
moonlit plethoras bleeding in the air
on the way to higher ground
Urban Jungle -- Olga Mihailicenko
Vallejo is on the northeastern shore of San Pablo Bay, 30 mi north of San Francisco. It was once part of the 84,000-acre (340 sq km) Rancho Suscol, an 1843 Mexican land grant made by governor Manuel Micheltorena to general Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who had been appointed to settle and oversee the north bay region. The neighboring city, Benicia, is named for his wife, Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo; founded in 1847, Vallejo had planned to name the town Francisca, but changed his mind when Yerba Buena chnged its name to San Francisco. After the American annexation of California, the general served on the new state's constitutional convention and was a member of its 1st senate. In 1850, his daughter Epifania married American general John B. Frisbie, who had lost the 1849 election as lieutenant governor, and offered to donate 156 acres (0.6 sq km) of Rancho Suscol to the state in order to establish a new state capital instead of San Jose. He proposed to name the settlement Eureka, but Frisbie named it Vallejo and hired E. H. Rowe to design the city layout. In 1851 the capital was established in Vallejo, and the government moved there the next year. However, the general had neglected to construct a building for the legislature, so after only 11 days they moved to Sacramento for the remainder of the session. In 1853 the legislature met in Vallejo again, but only for the purpose of officially moving the capital to Benicia. That, too, was temporary (only 14 days), and the capital was permanently moved to Sacramento again in 1854.
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