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Julian
McAllister was the commanding officer of the arsenal
from 1860 to 1886 and built a great deal of the
buildings at the arsenal at that time. He was the
son of a prominent Savannah, Georgia family, the
brother of New York society leader Ward McAllister
and Hall McAllister, a prominent San Francisco
lawyer. He was closely involved with Benicia
social life and was instrumental in the planning and
construction of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. During
these years, the arsenal played a strong roll as the
social and cultural center of Benicia. |
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The first
building that McAllister built was the commanding
officers house. Built in 1860, in a severe Greek
Revival style. This photograph shows the home as it
appeared in 1915, which clearly shows the major
renovations that were made to it sometime after
1876. It is now owned by the City of Benicia and
plans are to restore it.
There were many buildings constructed at this
time such as a storehouse, magazine, barracks,
duplex officers quarters, a large new set of shops
and the office building and guard/engine house shown
below which were taken about 1915. |
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Click on the
pictures to go to our Historic Picture and Drawing
Gallery for more information on these buildings. |
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By
1862, the Arsenal was almost a complete town within a town
and life was comfortable enough. The one major complaint of
the men was that of slow pay. The army at times had to meet
payroll by issuing notes to the men however, these were
heavily discounted in town, as much as 50%, making it very
bad for the morale of the men. McAllister did his best to
deal with the situation by urging Wells Fargo agents to cash
government drafts in coin in order to help pay not only the
soldiers, but for the civilian employees. |
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It was also
during this time that the army ended its experiments
with camels. They had been purchased by Confederate
President Jefferson Davis when he was the US
Secretary of War in 1855. He purchased 77 bactrian
(two hump) and dromedary (one hump) camels in the
Near East for southwest desert transport. Some were
used in surveying a wagon road in Navajo country
while others were used to carry freight at Forts
Mohave, Tejon and Yuma. Some liked the camels, but
most of the soldiers detested them. While they
could carry 600 pounds for 30 miles in desert
conditions without water, they were stubborn and
mean. |
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The Civil War distracted the army from the experiment and
the Deputy Quartermaster General for California got
permission from the Secretary of War to sell off the
animals. A corral was built on the southern part of the
arsenal property and all the camels were gathered from all
over California to be auctioned off. The local youngsters
of Benicia earned extra money hauling water to the barns.
The 34 camels which were auctioned off brought a total of
$1,495 in 1864 and were purchased by Samuel McLeneghan to
haul freight to Nevada mining camps. On April 7th he held a
Dromedary (Camel) Race at Agricultural Park as a
benefit to help a poverty-stricken Benicia resident. This
gave him the idea to sell a few of the camels to Wilson's
Circus near Sacramento as well as running several more races
in Marysville and Sacramento.
They were resold again but only a few were purchased and
the remaining camels were released into the desert where
they startled travelers for years. The last surviving camel
died in 1934 in the Griffith Park Zoo in Los Angeles.
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to come ..... |
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