Benicia Barracks: Army of the Pacific

You are passing the site of the Benicia Barracks, one of the United States Army's earliest posts on the Pacific Coast. Soldiers arrived on April ninth, eighteen forty-nine, when two companies of the Second Infantry pitched camp here at the edge of Suisun Bay. By eighteen fifty-one, Benicia had become an important Army base on the Pacific Coast.

The post was a crossroads for officers whose names would soon define the Civil War. Ulysses Grant served here in the early eighteen fifties, as did Edward Ord and Joseph Hooker. The adjacent Benicia Arsenal, established in eighteen fifty-two, became the Army's primary western ammunition depot, a role it held through both World Wars.

The barracks operated as a garrison for nearly fifty years before closing in eighteen ninety-eight.