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Home > California > CA - Quarry Links & Photographs > Solano County > List of Stone Quarries
(* Please note this list does not include sand or gravel quarries.)
“The Benicia Crushed Stone Company owns a quarry and rock-crusher at Hoyt’s siding, above Benicia, which have been operated for crushed stone, but are now (August, 1904) idle.”
Benicia, Solano County, California - Lime Plant and Lime Kilns Construction circa May 1905. (This article was transcribed by Betty Loose and posted on the Norcal email list from the Sacramento Evening Bee, Friday, May 5, 1905.)
“Benicia Lime Plant Under Construction
“Benicia (Solano Co.), May 5 - The steel work of a thirty-ton lime plant on the Benicia water front has just been completed. The plant will be used for the manufacture of lime. Two immense kilns have been placed in position, and lime will be burned within four weeks. A 20,000 gallon tank is being erected. The storerooms measure 93x110 feet. The rock used is to be shipped from Auburn and Rocklin. Employment will be given to about fifteen men.
“The building of the plant is due to the efforts of the Benicia Board of Trade, which has been endeavoring to secure manufacturing plants of solid backing for some time past.”
“Benicia Works. This property, at Benicia, owned by Jas. Clyne, has not been operated of recent years, but previous to the rise of the Portland cement industry in California was an important producer. The product is a ‘hydraulic limestone’ or natural cement and was first put on the market in 1860.
“Bibl.: R. VIII, p. 632; IX, p. 309; XII, p. 380; XIII, p. 612; Bull. 38, p. 185; Min. Res. W. of Rocky Mts., 1868, p. 245; Geol. Surv. of Cal., Geol. Vol. I, p. 101.”
“Parish Brothers. The Parish Brothers operate a pit which is leased from Pacific Coast Aggregate at Hoyt Siding on State Highway 21 about half way between Benicia and Cordelia. A small paving-block quarry was active here in 1890. This enterprise, and an attempt to produce aggregate, failed before 1904. Except for the production of aggregate during 1913 and 1914 no further work was done here until modern times.*
(* Page 106, footnote 93: Watts, W. L., Solano County: California Min. Bur. Rept. 10, p. 668, 1890.)
“The operation is on an isolated hill composed of southwest-dipping flows and tuff beds of the Sonoma volcanics. The upper beds contain closely spaced angular fragments of hard vesicular black lava in a matrix of tuff. Some of the lava fragments are altered on the surface. Underlying this is a sandy tuff which has a clastic texture and contains rounded yellow grains. The attitude is most easily obtained from the lower beds which strike N. 60 ° W. and dip 72 ° SW.
“Old inactive pits are in both breccia and tuff on the north, east, and south side of the hill. The present work is a bulldozer and scraper operation which is planing the hill from the summit northwest to the screening plant at the base. The breccia contains very hard fragments, but is sufficiently unconsolidated to permit this method of operation. Rock from the pit is passed through a jaw crusher. At times road metal has been produced, but now the produce is absorbed almost entirely by the company’s asphalt plant in Benicia.”
“James Clyne, Benicia, owner; extensive deposits of rock in Sec. 33, T. 3 N., R. 3 W., M. D. M., on the hills back of the town of Benicia, and in fact within the limits of the town, which until 1890 was used in making cement. The article was once in demand, and pronounced equal to the best imported. It is stated that 130,000 barrels were used in the construction of the New City Hall in San Francisco.* (*Footnote: Twelfth Annual Report of State Mineralogist, 1893-94, p. 380.)
“DILLON, PATRICK W. farmer and stone cutter, Section 28, Benicia Township, Post-office Benicia, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, February 3, 1820, where he resided till May, 1840, when he sailed for America arriving in New York City in June of that year. He at once proceeded to Troy, N. Y., and resided three months; thence to Lockport, N. Y., and remained one year. He then proceed to Youngstown, on fourth Niagara, where he worked at his trade during the summer of 1842, and from there he went to Toronto, Canada, where he spent the winter of 1842, and ‘43. In March, 1844, he went to New York City, and worked till 1846, when in the fall of that year he went to St. John, New Brunswick, where he was employed till May, 1847. He again returned to New York and carried on his trade till January 1849, when he sailed for California arriving in San Francisco July 8, 1849, and remaining in the city for a few weeks helping unload vessels at eight dollars a day. He then proceeded to the southern mines, on Wood’s creek and worked two months at mining with good success. He then went to Mogason’s Creek, and from there to Mariposa, Mariposa county, but meeting with poor success he returned to Mogason’s Creek with a colony of Texans, who settled there for a short time, and continued mining in different places till May, 1851, during which time he endured many hardships. The stories told by Mr. D., during his life spent in the mines, are very interesting, but for want of space we will have to omit them. In May, 1851, he came to Benicia, bringing with him eighteen hundred dollars, which he invested in the wharf built at Vallejo while the Capitol of the State was situated at that place.
In 1851, he opened a stone quarry on his fruit farm, and in connection with the other, started the Pioneer Stone Business in San Francisco, and among the contracts taken by him, is the St. Mary’s Cathedral, at San Francisco, and many other buildings. In 1856, he purchased his present farm, now consisting of four hundred acres of land, an seventy-six acres of tule. He married, at St. Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco, Bertha G. Jordan, January 6, 1856, she having been born in Hanover, Germany, January 29, 1830.”
“DILLON/JORDON--Married Jan. 30, at St. Mary’s Cathedral, by the Rev. Father Gallagher, Mr. Patrick W. DILLON, to Miss Louieza Bertha JORDON, both of this city. New York papers please copy.” Source: San Francisco Herald, 4 Jan 1856, p. 2, c. 5.”
According to this book, Patrick Dillon lost his life’s savings of $1,800 after investing in a wharf at Valley as he envisioned Benicia Becoming California’s permanent capitol. After that investment failed, he worked again in Benicia and saved up to buy 400 “upland acres at the point, where he put in a vineyard and orchard, and 80 acres of tule tideland. He opened a rock quarry which supplied stone for Old St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, among other structures. He also built a brickyard (circa 1852) and a wharf on the Strait.” Later he went into sheep ranching. According to the author, Patrick Dillon left the point in 1893 when he and his wife, German-born Bertha G. Jordan, moved across from St. Dominic’s Church where he lived until he died on April 19 th, 1896. He left all of his real property to St. Dominic’s. Both Patrick Dillon and his wife are buried in the St. Dominic’s Cemetery.
There was once hope that the Dillon ranch house would be saved when the State of California took over Dillon Point in 1967 as the Benicia State Recreation Park. According to the author, “It had a first story of sandstone, quarried and laid by its owner, topped by a wooden second story and attic added circa 1890...The historic, but deteriorating, building was demolished and no trace of Benicia ’s Irish pioneer remains on the point named for him.”
(Please note that on pp. 57 of this book there is a photograph of Patrick Dillon’s house with the following caption: “One of the many historic Benicia area buildings which fell a victim of demolition was this old ranch house. It was the home of stone quarrier-rancher-farmer, Patrick Dillon, on Dillon Point, in what is now the Benicia State Recreation Area Benicia Capitol.”)
Benicia State Recreation Area (According to this web site, “Benicia State Recreation Area covers marsh, grassy hillsides and rocky beaches along the narrowest portion of the Carquinez Strait.” The recreation area is open to the public.
This article includes a map of the Carquinez Strait that indicates the location of Dillon Point.
“This spring (in 2003) the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council joined with California State Parks and the San Francisco Bay Trail to celebrate the opening of a new multi-use Ridge Trail segment in the Benicia State Recreation Area. The two-mile trail along the Carquinez Strait is also the route of the Bay Trail; it is located just east of the Carquinez Bridge on the Dillon Point Peninsula and offers tremendous views of the strait and the East Bay Hills....”
“…In the sixties quarries were opened, on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay to furnish a bluish sandstone, and near Petaluma in Sonoma County for the production of basalt. During the eighties and nineties light-brown sandstone was quarried at Benicia in Solano County, and near San Jose in Santa Clara County….”
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