The 1851 Benicia Meat Fall

A Tug on a Thread

Almost as soon as I started reading Chris O’Brien’s cattle mutilation classic Stalking the Herd (2014), I came across a reference to a mysterious fall of meat that had happened not far from where I live:

“A strange, truly inexplicable, story was published in the July 24, 1851 edition of the San Francisco Herald that covered an alleged event that was said to have occurred at a U.S. Army Base near Vallejo, California—located on the Sacramento River. It was reported that while the base’s personnel were mustered on the parade ground, ‘blood and thin slices of fresh meat showered down on the parade ground. The post surgeon was quoted…to the effect that the meat was neatly sliced into pieces about one-eighth-inch thick.’” (p.56)

Vallejo being just a few miles north of me and near a now shuttered military base, I figured I could hunt down the details of this remarkable event myself. First, though, I had to perform due diligence with respect to archival sources.

A Confusion of Citations

The quote mentioning the Vallejo meat in Stalking the Herd had a citation, but when I took a look at the list of sources at the end of the chapter I was perplexed. Some of the citation numbers were in regular type, others in italics. The numbering began with one not once but several times, still varying font style at random. Eventually I found a citation with a nine in front of it and figured that must be the right one. It pointed to Wild Talents by Charles Fort.

Although a searchable version of Fort’s Wild Talents rendered up several mentions of falls of meat and blood, it did not mention any that happened in Vallejo. The newspapers of the era would tell me more, I reasoned. Was a copy of the cited July 24, 1851 edition of the San Francisco Herald available online? No. I headed off to the newspaper room at my estranged alma mater, UC Berkeley, to reacquaint myself with the microfiche machines there, but the Herald’s July 24, 1851 issue was missing from their collection. The next stop was the Historical Documents room of the San Francisco Public Library. I leafed through a whole box of pages from the Herald, but there was no July 24, 1851.

Feeling frustrated, I looked at the references given in Stalking the Herd once again. If you ignored the actual citation numbers and what type of font they were in, the ninth on the list was Jim Brandon’s Weird America (1978). That was relatively easy to order up on interlibrary loan; I just had to wait for it to arrive. In the meantime, I was itching to get out into the field.

Table 1: Various Accounts of Meatfalls 

Year of Event	Month/Day	Description of Event	Primary Source Cited	Secondary Source
1841	Aug	Rain of blood in Wilson County, TN	Amer. Jour. Sci., Oct 1841; Ohio Repository, Canton, 9/9/1841 reprinted from the Nashville Banner	Rough Guide, Unexplained
1846	Nov	four-foot diameter bright object fell, leaving behind a mass of foetid jelly in Lowville, NY*	Scientific American, vol. 2, p. 79	Rough Guide
1850	Feb	shower of flesh and blood in Sampson County, NC	Fayetteville Carolinian	Unexplained
1851	Jul	fall of meat in Benicia, CA	SF Herald, 7/24/1851	Weird America
1869	Jun	fall of flesh-like organic matter/flesh and blood in Santa Clara County, CA	mentioned in LA and SF news accounts of 8/1/1869 event	Wild Talents
1869	Jul or Aug	Flesh and blood fell from the sky for three minutes covering two acres at the Hudson ranch, Los Nietos Township, CA	LA News 8/3/1869 SF Evening Bulletin 8/9/1869, p. 2, c. 4	Wild Talents, Unexplained
1876	Mar	Flakes of meat fall in KY	Scientific American, March 1876	Rough Guide
1876	Nov	Shower of small pieces of flesh covering half an acre, Gastonia County, NC	Newark Advocate, Ohio, 12/1/1876 quoting Charlotte Observer	Unexplained
1890	May	fall of a blood-like substance, Cessignadi, Calabria	Science News v. 35, p. 104	Rough Guide
1968	Nov	fall of meat and blood between Cacapava and Sao Jose dos Campos	Flying Saucer Review, Nov. 1968, quoting from Brazilian papers	Rough Guide

The Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum

By visiting the Vallejo Museum I figured I could locate the parade grounds on the nearby shuttered military base where, according to the article, hairy flakes of putrid roast beef had fallen in 1851. Now, be aware that I grew up in New York State and my knowledge of California history was pretty thin. Missions, gold, kill all the Indians, San Francisco earthquake, grape boycott, blah blah blah. Although no one ever said so outright, I felt confident that neither Henry Hudson nor the Iroquois had been involved in any of it.

To correct my ignorance, I had prepared a list of questions for my visit concerning the identification of key newspapers of the Gold Rush era, sources dealing with early cattle farming practices in California and any relevant letters or oral histories containing references to falls of meat. Ideally, the museum would have a specimen or two preserved for my examination. However, when push came to shove I was too embarrassed to tell the eager custodians of the small reference collection there what I was actually interested in. I just mumbled something about wanting to learn more about cattle farming in early California. Why was I so interested in cattle farming? asked the friendly, curious archivists. Because since moving to the California I had always lived close to San Pablo Avenue, I told them. It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it wasn’t entirely untrue.

Cattle and Wealth in California

 San Pablo Avenue, 1861

San Pablo Avenue, also known as the Lincoln Highway, is a major surface street that runs the length of the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. Back in the day, vast herds of cattle were driven south from the Carquinez Straits along San Pablo Avenue to stockyards located across the bay from a burgeoning and meat-hungry San Francisco. According to local histories I had read, those cattle drives are why San Pablo Avenue has always been so wide in a rapidly growing urban area.

Only a few hours poking around in the museum and its research library revealed even more about California’s cow story. I started to think that seen in their larger context falls of meat seemed almost understandable.

The United States acquired California in 1848. Because of its tremendous growth in population and wealth, California jumped the usual stepping stone of becoming a Territory and instead was made directly into a state in 1850. The pace of growth was so rapid that some historians express it by saying that in San Francisco, Sacramento and Gold Country, 50 years of normal growth were compressed into less than six months. In 1848, the population of California was 15,000; in 1852 it was 200,000. In San Francisco alone, the 1849 population was 5,000; barely three years later in 1852 it was 34,766.

Where it all began

Prior to California becoming a state, cattle were farmed primarily in southern California on the traditional, Spanish-speaking Californio economic system. Cattle were sold for hides and carcasses were left for waste, since there was no way to preserve them for transport and no local market to transport them to. This served as a stable economic system based on barter where cattle hides served as banknotes. With the US takeover of California from Mexico, the Gold Rush and statehood in 1850, the cattle industry changed overnight. The discovery of gold meant that mining camps and cities in the north demanded more beef. Carcasses were now of value; in 1849, the price per head went from $2 to $300. Tens of thousands of head were driven north to grazing ranges near San Francisco and Sacramento. The traditional economy and culture of the Californios was undermined, rustling increased, and out-of-state stockmen were attracted to California. A North/South culture clash began and a newly minted Northern legislature started putting heavy taxes on Southern cow counties.

Thinking in terms of infrastructure, consider that in 1849 there was almost nothing in San Francisco; everything had to be imported and speculation was rampant. In contrast, the Southern CA economy was stable, hides serving as banknotes in a barter economy. The discovery of gold resulted in a shift from the hide-based to a coin-based economy. Later in the 1850’s a drop in beef prices plus confusion over land titles resulted in property wealth shifting to Americans over Californios.

All of this boils down to a nuclear detonation of massive social, economic and cultural change taking place in a highly compressed window of time. If there’s any explanatory power to the theory that some types of paranormal phenomena are driven by states of high human tension that don’t have any other available outlet for expression, maybe there should have been meatfalls and other weird things happening all over the place, not just an isolated outbreak over the parade grounds in 1851. And where were those parade grounds, anyway?

Table 2: Culture Clashes circa 1850 in California

Ranchero/Californio/Hispano	Gringo/American
barter economy	cash economy
cattle valued for hides	cattle valued for beef on the hoof
South	North
local/Mexican culture	out of state/Eastern US culture
stability	speculation

A Parade of Capitals

I knew that Vallejo had been home to a major naval base, Mare Island, recently decommissioned. When I visited the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, I expected the docents there to be able to tell me where its parade grounds had been. However, things were not that simple. The naval base was a naval base, not an army base (turns out there’s a difference!) and anyway was not commissioned until 1854. In other words, it didn’t even exist at the time of the meat fall. Then I learned that Vallejo had been the state capital during the year of the meat fall. Perhaps the parade ground had been near the capitol building? The idea was intriguing. Not quite a case of a UFO landing on the White House lawn, but can we afford to completely sneer at a significantly Fortean event like a meat fall at the State Capitol during times of upheaval, even if sandwiches are ultimately out of the question?

When California’s first legislature sat in San Jose, the city of Vallejo did not even exist. It was just tiny Eureka, founded in 1844 and consisting of a few corrugated metal houses imported from Liverpool, England. General Mariano Vallejo, Mexican Commandante for (recently ceded) Northern California, lobbied to make Vallejo the state capital by promising donations of land, public buildings and money. Between February 19 and May 13, 1851, Vallejo’s son-in-law John Frisbee ran a lengthy ad every day in the San Francisco Herald extolling the many virtues of the projected capital (and offering lots for sale):

“Vallejo – this place, the proposed permanent seat of government for the State of California, is bounded on the east by the city of Benicia, on the south by the Straits of Carquines, and on the west by the Bay of Napa. It is surrounded by one of the safest harbors in the world, with a waterfront of seven miles in extent, affording a secure anchorage to the largest vessels afloat and capable of containing any amount of shipping . . . Within three miles of the proposed Capital Square there are several bold mineral springs differing in their medicinal and chemical properties, among which are sulphur, chalybeate and soda, and within two miles there is a large supply of fountain water, on the western face of the mountain, which can be easily introduced into the city, capable of affording an ample supply of pure and fresh water to a large and populous city. Every vessel coming up or going down the great Bay of San Francisco will have a full view of the Capital, and every vessel which enters the straits of Carquines will pass immediately by it. Mare Island, situationed upon the opposite side of the bay of Napa and fronting Vallejo, is recommended by the Board of Naval Commissioners as the most suitable location upon the coast for the great Pacific Navy Yard.”

It was no exaggeration to say that location had military potential, and the sudden westward migration following the discovery of gold in 1848 had motivated US military interests to secure a good location for a West Coast base. Vallejo and even tinier Benicia next to it were at a nexus of the key economic routes critical to all of Northern California; they would, in time, come to house important Army and Navy installations.

Vallejo Capitol Building with Cows

As a capitol, however, Vallejo was failure. Gleason’s Pictorial of March 13, 1852 presents a bucolic portrait of the capitol building with a pair of cows (coincidence?), captioned “Our artist presents a very fine view of Vallejo, the new Capital of California. It is pronounced by persons who have visited and are familiar with the spot as singularly accurate and faithful.” However, where there are cows, there will be cow pies. The museum placard accompanying this picture dryly notes that “primitive conditions in the young city forced the state government to leave Vallejo after two brief sessions [1852 and 1853].”

From Gleason’s Pictorial:

“The members of the legislature, when they first met, were compelled to sit on nail kegs with a board placed across the open head or upon temporary benches which now and then broke under the weight of legislative dignity and let down a row of honorable gentlemen flat upon the floor, to the great hazard of the gravity of the House. This was in consequence of the unfinished state of the capitol. The boarding houses were not much better prepared for the reception of the public dignitaries, and in many instances members had to take turns in occupying chairs during the night.”

The capitol building housed the Senate on its second floor, the Assembly on its first and a barroom and a bowling alley in the basement. The placard wraps up by saying, “Little significant work was accomplished during the legislature’s brief stay in Vallejo.” Between 1850 and 1854, the state capital moved from San Jose to Vallejo to Sacramento, back to Vallejo, over to Benicia and finally back to Sacramento. When the legislature left Vallejo for the last time, the state capitol was used as a warehouse until it burned down in an arson fire. Today it’s a sidewalk next to a parking lot near the bus terminal.

Site of the Capitol

Vallejo Transit Hub

My visit to the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum had been quite productive. It seemed clear that the meat fall parade grounds were not to be found at the nearby retired naval base on Mare Island. The site of Vallejo’s will-o-the-wisp state capitol building didn’t seem to be a good replacement candidate, either -- although I did seek out the exact spot and stand there for a moment or two in case something odd happened. Most abundantly clear was that in addition to not having found the parade grounds, I was now missing a military base as well.

Going by the Book

Getting back home, I collected Jim Brandon’s Weird America from the library and looked up the page referenced about the Vallejo meat fall in Stalking the Herd:

“Benicia (Near Vallejo on the Sacramento River.) Troops at the U.S. Army base then located here were startled one day in July 1851 when blood and thin slices of fresh meat showered down on the parade ground. The post surgeon was quoted by the San Francisco Herald (issue of July 24, 1851) to the effect that the meat was neatly sliced into pieces about one-eighth-inch thick. Just as with the meat that fell on Los Nietos, California, in 1869, there was a rim of short bristles around some of the pieces. This is the general area of the 1951 mystery sky blasts.”

Things started to make sense. I couldn’t find the parade ground in Vallejo because it had never been there – it was in Benicia, the next town over. O’Brien’s text had omitted the word Benicia, probably because no one knows were Vallejo is, let alone Benicia. And what was up with those 1951 mystery sky blasts, anyway?

There had been one map at the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum with a large, blank area in the direction of Benicia but simply marked “old military base.” It wasn’t part of the Vallejo/Mare Island installation and there were no further details; maybe it was a clue? I did have a few notes on US military presence in Benicia from my visit to the Vallejo museum, but hadn’t fleshed out that part of the story since I assumed my quarry was somewhere in Vallejo.

As it turned out, I had business in Benicia. That big blank area on the map marked “military base”? Today it’s part refinery, part industrial park. In the industrial park is a business that sells high-density foam tubing used by refineries and also by people who make padded sticks for full contact sparring. And, right on the edge of the industrial park, in the old Camel Barn, is the Benicia Historical Museum.

Benicia Historical Museum

With 50 bucks of insulated tubing coiled in my back seat I pulled into a dusty, empty parking lot next to a scattering of deserted, drab but sturdy-looking buildings. Wandering around the side of the main building, I found a charming garden with hedges and paved walkways surrounding a burbling fountain and felt like I had suddenly been transported into the old Myst game. After a while, a docent arrived to unlock the door of the camel barn. She supervised me as I put five bucks into a plexiglass container with a slit in the top, and then let me loose in this most excellent little museum.

My goal was to locate the parade grounds upon which the meat fell, which I accomplished in a most pleasant and serendipitous manner while having a good time looking at all the exhibits (which offered a very lively sense of local history), browsing the book/gift store and chatting with the docent. (Keep in mind that I have a no point admitted to anyone what I am actually looking for or why, for fear of being ridiculed or worse.)

The US Army had acquired land in Benicia 1847, before California was even a state. In fact, the Army and the Navy had fought over Benicia because it offered deep harbors, with the Navy ending up at Mare Island closer to Vallejo. By 1849, the Army installed infantry and artillery regiments in its new Benicia Barracks. The city itself incorporated in 1850, and in 1851 the Benicia Barracks became the first ordinance supply depot in the American West. Like Vallejo, Benicia had its turn as the state capital, with the city hall housing the 1853-54 state legislative session. There was a lot going on in the sleepy, artsy, slightly oily little town of today back in the early 1850s when the meat fell.

Many sources at the museum, both textual and pictorial, pointed to the parade ground being between the Commandant’s Home and officer quarters of the earliest, 1850s-era army base. This area was located slightly downhill from the museum itself, judging from the handy map of sites of historical interest they give out. However, while many sites are clearly marked, the parade ground itself was not one of them.

 Drawing ca. 1862 by Hugo Hochholzer shows the clock tower (far left), commandant’s house (next left) and the lieutenant’s quarters (far right) and the 1862 storehouse (facing parade grounds)

It took a couple tries to locate the parade ground in real life. Both the Commandant's home and the officer quarters are in private hands now; the latter is an elegant event center and the former, marked with signposts of its historical significance, serves as a business center. Nearby is the famously exploding Clock Tower, which allowed for positive identification of the other two structures as being those which flanked the meat-flecked parade ground of 1851. While much of the area is marked as no parking, no one seemed to mind very much my wandering around on foot.

These photos show buildings that were almost certainly much more elegant than the 1851 versions they replaced. The Commandant's Home (1860) today faces the Clock Tower, which was built in 1859. The rear of the Commandant's Home fronts on the Parade Ground.

Commandant's Quarters
The Clock Tower

At the opposite end of the Parade Ground sits the old Officer's Quarters. The front of this elegant building is turned to face the Carquinez Strait and the Parade Grounds are to one side.

Old Officer's Quarters ...	... now an event center
Stunning view of the Carquinez Strait ...	... just down hill from the parade grounds

Between the two grand buildings I found the parade ground itself:

Where The Meat Fell.

The Commandant's house is behind the trees in the distance. The Officer's quarters are off to the left. There was no doubt this was the place.

The Parade Grounds

Looking toward Jefferson Street Mansion	Looking toward the 680 bridge
Looking at the ground	Looking up from downhill

The land seemed to belong to the Jefferson Street Mansion event center and was not being used for much. Still, I began to investigate for anomalies. I found this squash highly suspicious:

It was just lying there in the middle of a fairly wide expanse with no other squash anywhere in sight. Had it fallen from the sky? Had the phenomenon gone vegan? Seriously, what was a bright yellow squash doing in the middle of the field? I continued to investigate.

Less than 30 feet away I came across this small (about 4 inch) piece of screen, its edges cut with seeming surgical precision. Again, it was the only small square of screen in the entire field. Where had it come from, and how? Was it linked with the squash somehow? Was it a message? A screen memory, perhaps?

Anything was possible. In this very place, meat had fallen from the sky in 1851.

But wait! There’s more!

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for having found the parade grounds where the meat fell, but when I got home and started to write up my notes I realized I had missed something. If the gist of my argument was going to be that Fortean events should only be considered in their full context of meaning, all I had were vaguely temporally contiguous events – changes in cattle farming practices, shifts in social and cultural power both generally and as evidenced by the perambulations of the state capital. There was still no reason meat should have fallen over Benicia rather than, say, nearby Emeryville (where slaughtering operations were in the process of destroying a major shell mound), Vallejo, San Francisco or for that matter the future Hollywood. Except for that stupid claim I had heard so often I wrote down, that the California Gold Rush actually began in Benicia. A small town’s lame claim to fame, right?

Von Pfister’s Store

von Pfister's Store display at Benicia Historical Museum

Well, no. Documentation is fairly strong that the famed California Gold Rush, usually associated with Sutter’s Mill or San Francisco, began in Benicia in 1948 at von Pfister Adobe, a general store and hotel (actually, a shack on the water).

From the Vallejo Times Herald:

“As the tale goes, in early 1848 Charles Bennett, an employee of John Sutter, and a companion were on their way to Monterey to ask Gov. Mason to grant land to them, including Sutter's Mill. John Sutter gave them strict orders not to disclose the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma. But, as they stopped to rest at the Benicia store, they couldn't resist. Others assembled talked about finding coal and Bennett said he had something better. A buckskin bag holding about $100 worth of gold dust and nuggets was passed around and the Gold Rush was on. A few days later, Benicians saw numerous people rushing up the Sacramento River in boats to stake their own claim.”

Arguably the single most intense human social cataclysm in California's social history, the Gold Rush era, was sparked off by a chance exchange in a shack on the waterfront about 1.5 miles away from the parade ground where the meat fell a few years later. I had my smoking gun. Von Pfister's is one of the more obscure of history's emporia, but with some small effort I located it.

View from von Pfister's (Carquinez Strait)	von Pfister's circa 1940
Protective structure over von Pfister's	Visit von Pfister's today!

The adobe and wood structure is situated right on the water, subjected to all kinds of weather; today it is sheltered by metal and canvas and I couldn't get a good look at it. Still, I stood there at the edge of the water and thought back to that evening when the history of California and its people changed so dramatically due to an inadvertent remark by a tired, hungry traveler.

Geologists say earthquakes are cause by the movement of faults in the earth, but what activates those faults? Accumulated stress finds an opportunity for release;

A chance remark in

a provisional shed prompts

a cataclysm.

Standing at von Pfister's a mile or so downhill from the parade grounds where the meat fell, amidst all the history I had so suddenly discovered, it almost felt as if the mystery of the falling meat was less problematic than the cultural and ecological cataclysm I had suddenly become aware of. If I were mysterious flakes of meat, I would totally have rained down on troops assembled on the parade grounds of the Benicia Barracks in 1851.

But seriously, what’s up with those sky blasts?

In Weird America, Jim Brandon also mentioned mysterious sky blasts that occurred during May 1951 in parts of Solano and Contra Costa County. Benicia and Vallejo are in Solano County on the north side of the Carquinez Strait; one of the blasts was said to destroy the causeway linking the Mare Island Naval base with the city of Vallejo. Richmond, where I live, is of course in Contra Costa County on the south side of the Strait. What really made me sit up and take notice as I perused Brandon's account of the Benicia meat fall was that the next paragraph talked about something strange that fell from the sky down the street from me in 1957.

"At Richmond, a cast-iron object about twice the size of a military hand grenade fell through the garage roof at 600 Key Boulevard on July 31, 1957. Albert T. Haynes found it embedded in the cab of his truck next morning. The object was tear-shaped, weighed about five pounds, and had a brass screw in the center and a minute hole in the tail end."

600 Key Route Boulevard is two blocks from me, and in fact I know the woman who owns the house next door. You do, too, if you've eaten at one of the city's favorite Thai restaurants. For your edification, here are photos of Where the Cast Iron Thing With A Brass Screw (oh, those aliens!) Fell:

600 Key is the house to the right.

Here's the garage. I suspect a remodel.

Maybe I'll look into it more someday. Maybe someone has the object? Probably another one of my neighbors. But first I feel like I owe the El Cerrito Ouija Frenzy of 1920 some attention.

Sources and Background Reading

Brandon, Jim (1978) Weird America

Brands, H. W. (2002) The age of gold: the California Gold Rush and the new American dream

Clark, Jerome (2013) Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena (3^rd ed)

Fort, Charles (1932) Wild Talents

Holliday, J. S. (1999) Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California

Marschner, Janice (2000) California 1850: A snapshot in time

Michell, John and Bob Rickard (2007) Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena

O’Brien, Christopher (2014) Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery

Richards, Rand (2009) Mud, Blood and Gold: San Francisco in 1849