Suisun City: The West Wind on the Bay
Near Vallejo, California
Suisun City sits at the edge of the largest contiguous estuarine marsh on the West Coast, and its name carries the memory of the people who lived here long before any American arrived. Suisun comes from the Patwin word for west wind, the name of the tribe that occupied these marshes and sloughs for centuries. When the first American entrepreneurs reached the waterfront in the early eighteen fifties, the name stuck.
A merchant named Josiah Wing built a wharf, a warehouse, and a general store in eighteen fifty-two, sensing that the sheltered channel connecting Suisun Bay to the Sacramento River delta would make a natural cargo hub. Streets were laid out in eighteen fifty-four, and the town incorporated in eighteen sixty-eight the same year the railroad arrived from Vallejo. Suisun City today sits between Travis Air Force Base and the Suisun Marsh, a brackish wetland that draws millions of migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway each year.
