Fairfield: Clipper Captain, County Seat, Air Base
Near Vallejo, California
Fairfield, California was founded in eighteen fifty-six by Robert H. Waterman, a clipper ship captain who had sailed around the world five times and wanted a quiet life. He named the settlement after his boyhood home of Fairfield, Connecticut, and lobbied to move the Solano County seat here from Benicia, succeeding in eighteen fifty-eight.
The county seat stayed; the quiet life did not. In nineteen forty-two, the Army began building what would become Travis Air Force Base on the eastern edge of town, and the base grew to be the largest single employer in Solano County, with an economic impact exceeding one billion dollars annually. Named for Brigadier General Robert F.
Travis, killed in a bomber crash on the base in nineteen fifty, Travis is today the primary military air gateway to the Pacific, handling among the heaviest cargo and passenger traffic of any military terminal in the United States.
