Benicia Capitol State Historic Park preserves two parts of California history: the Benicia Capitol and the Fischer-Hanlon House and garden. The Benicia Capitol, built in 1852 as a city hall in a Greek Revival/Palladian style, became California's third capitol and housed the state legislature and archives from February 1853 to February 1854, when the bilingual legislature passed legislation enabling women to own property. After the capital moved to Sacramento, the building served the community in many roles, including Solano County Courthouse, Episcopal worship space, Benicia Grammar School, Fire Department headquarters, city hall, and public library, before the state acquired it in 1951 and restored it, reopening it to the public in 1958 and later as part of the park in 1976. The Fischer-Hanlon House began in the 1850s on First Street as a Gold Rush era hotel, was damaged by fire, and was purchased by merchant Joseph Fischer in 1858, who moved it to its present site and remodeled it into a 14-room home occupied by three generations of the family. It survives as an example of a late 1800s upper-middle-class home, with historic yard features such as a privy, hitching post, and cistern, and in 1968 the Fischer-Hanlon granddaughters deeded the house and its contents to the state as a memorial to their family. The garden reflects nineteenth-century home life, with formal front plantings and a working backyard for laundry, produce, and animals, shaped over generations by the Fischer-Hanlon family and enriched by gifts from students to the Hanlon sisters.