California's early statehood was an exercise in restlessness. The legislature had already tried San Jose and Vallejo before arriving in Benicia in February 1853. In Vallejo, legislators had complained bitterly about inadequate furniture and miserable sleeping quarters. Governor John Bigler consented to the move, and Benicia welcomed the government into its city hall, a dignified building with Greek Revival and Palladian influences that suggested permanence. For a little more than twelve months, this building on the northern shore of San Francisco Bay served as the seat of California's government. Laws were debated, budgets argued, and the young state's future shaped beneath its portico. But the complaints that had driven the legislature from Vallejo followed it to Benicia: poor weather, uncomfortable lodgings, and what lawmakers delicately described as 'the insecure condition of the public archives.'

Sacramento saw its opportunity. The city proposed letting the legislature use the Sacramento County Courthouse free of charge. For lawmakers who had spent years shuffling between inadequate accommodations, the offer proved irresistible. On February 24, 1854, both the Assembly and Senate passed an enabling act that voided all previous legislation tying the capital to any other city. Governor Bigler signed it the next day, and the entire government boarded the Wilson G. Hunt for the journey upriver. The Sacramento Union reported the departure with evident satisfaction, noting the locals' furious attempt to extract a five-hundred-dollar docking fee from the departing steamship. Sacramento would remain the capital from that day forward, making Benicia's thirteen-month tenure the shortest of any California capitol city.

Walk into the restored capitol today and the 1850s reassemble around you. The original ponderosa pine floors have been reconstructed. Period desks line the legislative chamber, four of them dating to the 1850s or earlier, each furnished with the tools of mid-century governance: a candlestick, a quill pen, blotting sand, a spittoon, and a top hat. A nineteenth-century newspaper lies open on every desk, as though lawmakers have merely stepped outside. The building earned California State Historic Landmark status in 1935 and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Adjacent to the capitol sits the Fischer-Hanlon House, an early Benicia building that was relocated to the grounds and converted into a private home in 1858, four years after the politicians departed. A carriage house, workers' quarters, and sculpted gardens round out the small park.

On February 16, 2000, California's lawmakers did something they had not done in 146 years: they convened in Benicia. The symbolic session celebrated the 150th anniversary of the legislature's first meeting. Members sat at the antique desks beneath the same roof their predecessors had fled. The building had survived far more than neglect in the intervening years. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger placed it on a closure list in 2008 as part of a deficit reduction plan. Public outcry reversed that decision, but the park appeared on closure lists again in 2009 and 2011 under Governor Jerry Brown. In 2013, California's Director of Parks and Recreation, Anthony L. Jackson, declared that no state park would close on his watch. The capitol that California's government once abandoned had found, at last, a constituency willing to fight for it.