Benicia Torchlight Parade and Fourth of July Picnic

By the morning of July 3, lawn chairs stand in rows along the sidewalks of First Street in Benicia, set out hours before a parade that does not step off until 6:30 in the evening. Deputy City Manager Mario Giuliani described the custom in the city’s newsletter of July 4, 2022: “in Benicia we don’t wait for the 4th of July to begin our National Birthday Bash, we begin on the morning of the 3rd (or earlier for some) by lining up chairs on the sidewalk of First Street to prepare for our Torchlight Parade.” Sidewalk space is first come, first served. Those without a chair take a place on the curb.

Fifty entries down First Street

Benicia Main Street produces the parade. It is the downtown revitalization nonprofit founded in 1987, and it keeps its office and visitor center in the old Southern Pacific depot at 90 First Street, near the water. Benicia Magazine counted more than 50 entries in the 2025 parade, among them marching bands, clubs, community groups, and local businesses. The magazine gave that year’s route as B Street to Military Street. Benicia Main Street’s listing for the 2026 parade, held July 3 to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, put the route along First Street between D Street and Benicia City Park. Sol Trans has run free service to the parade for residents and visitors.

Each year a grand marshal rides at the front. In 2025 it was Mike Caplin, whom Benicia Magazine called “a longtime Benicia resident and dedicated community advocate.” In 2008 it was Charles “Charlie” Alves, a fifth-generation Benician and a 1955 graduate of Benicia High School. He spent almost 14 years as a butcher at the Park & Shop market, then went to beauty college in Oakland and in 1966 opened Chez Charles, a hair salon on First Street.

Fireworks over the Carquinez Strait

The parade is the first night of a two-day holiday. On July 4, Benicia Main Street presents fireworks over the Carquinez Strait at 9:30 p.m. Benicia Magazine names the First Street Green as the best place to watch and advises a blanket, a picnic, and a jacket, because waterfront nights cool quickly. Benicia Main Street names the Waterfront Southern Pacific Railroad Depot as its prime viewing place. Seats there went to the largest donors to the 2026 show and to the top three teams in a fundraising contest. Teams entered with good-natured “smack talk,” which Main Street posted on its social media.

In 2022 the fireworks were fired from the end of the First Street Pier, with no barge that year, and boaters were held 1,000 feet off. Earlier that day the Green filled from 3 p.m. with live music and food vendors. Before the pandemic the holiday also included a daytime Picnic in the Park. Officials told CBS San Francisco in 2021 that about 20,000 spectators came to the parade and fireworks each year. Every private firework is illegal within city limits, including the kind sold as “safe and sane.”

Torches and a volunteer fire department

According to Benicia Magazine, the parade dates to the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the town’s volunteer fire department organized it. There were no streetlights then. The procession set out after sunset, lit only by torches carried by hand, and the parade took its name from them. Electric lights have since replaced the flames. Photographs and artifacts from early parades are kept at the Museum of History Benicia. In those pictures the crowds wear ankle-length dresses and three-piece suits; along First Street now they wear shorts and tank tops.

Two summers without a parade

In 2020 Benicia Main Street and the City of Benicia cancelled the Torchlight Parade, the Picnic in the Park, and the fireworks because of the coronavirus pandemic. The fire department’s press release of June 23 suggested other ways to spend the holiday: a virtual block party, a driveway movie, or straw rockets built from a NASA template and launched in place of fireworks.

On May 17, 2021, the city cancelled again, although California was due to lift its COVID restrictions on June 15. City Manager Erik Upson said, “In Benicia, we don’t have the facilities that would allow to limit the size of mass gatherings.” Solano County was still in the restrictive Red Tier. County Health Officer Dr. Bela Matyas called the gathering “a scenario that is high risk.” Jake Piehnik, a resident, told the station, “there’s no way to tell who’s been vaccinated. So being in a crowd that large, it’s still is a little concerning.” His wife, Janel, added, “I think we are a little disappointed.”

The parade came back on July 3, 2022, after the two-year hiatus. After it ended, a lighted drone show by Verge Aero rose over the waterfront. Gene Pedrotti of Ace Hardware paid for it to mark his business’s hundredth year and also hosted the East Bay Mudd Band. Giuliani’s newsletter described the thousands who watched from the shore and called the show “an awe inspiring lighted night sky of story telling.”