Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Northgate Vallejo, CA

Vallejo is named for General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the Californio statesman who donated 156 acres of his Rancho Suscol land and promised $370,000 to build a new state capital there.

Vallejo served as the capital of California twice — briefly in 1852 and again in 1853 — before the legislature moved to neighboring Benicia, named for Vallejo's wife, and finally settled in Sacramento.

The city was founded in 1851 and incorporated on March 30, 1868.

Mare Island Naval Shipyard, founded in 1854 across the strait from downtown, was the U.S. Navy's first naval base on the West Coast and defined Vallejo's economy for nearly 150 years until it closed in 1996.

During World War II, Mare Island grew into one of the world's largest ship construction and repair facilities, and Vallejo's population exploded from about 26,000 to nearly 100,000 in just five years.

The 2020 census counted 126,090 people in Vallejo — the largest city in Solano County — living in about 44,800 households.

When Vallejo's old state capitol building burned in the 1880s, Mare Island firefighters had to be ferried across the Napa River to help, in what is recorded as the first mutual-aid fire response in California history.

Vallejo is home to the Cal Poly Maritime Academy, a California State University campus devoted to maritime training, and to Touro University California, both on or near Mare Island.

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, a 135-acre park in Vallejo combining roller coasters with marine-life and land-animal attractions, began as Marine World in Redwood City in 1968 and moved to Vallejo in 1986.

Vallejo has had one of California's largest Filipino communities for generations — residents of Filipino ancestry made up about a fifth of the city's population in the 2000 census.