It was February of 1854 and the California State Legislature decided it was time to designate what would be the permanent capital for the state of California. Well, sort of. We'll get to why in a minute.Sacramento was hardly the first capital for California.According to the California State Library, before California was a state, it was a Spanish/Mexican territory and the pseudo-capital then was the Royal Presidio Chapel in Monterey. It remained the Spanish and Mexican capital from around 1774 to 1849. It was never, however, the state capital.In 1849 the first city named state capital was San Jose. It remained so until 1851, as a matter of fact. The state constitution even declared San Jose the capital once it was ratified. But the two-story building — the state Capitol building (note the "ol" for building and "al" for city) was destroyed by fire in 1853. There's a marker indicating that the site in San Jose as such, but that is all that remains. The San Jose Fairmont Hotel is on the former Capitol site now.In 1852, the state capital was moved to Vallejo. For 12 days. It was then moved to Sacramento for the duration of the legislative session of that year. Yet after the Legislature finished that year it moved back to Vallejo again for the rest of the year.In 1853, the capital moved again, though not to Sacramento. It was in Benecia. A large brick building which is still there on the northwest corner of 1st and G streets in Benecia, it served only a year as the state's Capitol and capital before the Legislature decided to move back to Sacramento. Because the state seemed to be having difficulties setting up a permanent center of government in San Jose, Vallejo and Benicia, the Legislature took up the city of Sacramento's offer to move to the city's courthouse as the center of government. From 1852 to 1854 the building on 7th and "I" streets served as the Capitol. They didn't make any other plans to move to another city, but about a month after adjournment of the 1854 session...the Sacramento courthouse, and a large swath of the city, burned to the ground.A new courthouse was quickly built and served, again, as the Capitol for the state. It wasn't until 1860 that the Capitol building we know now became the (semi) permanent home of the Legislature.There are, however, notable exceptions that moved the capital, albeit temporarily, out of Sacramento after that. In 1861 and 1862 there were very heavy rains in the Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento River overflowed its banks, flooding the entire city. Facing significant difficulties in convening the Legislature, lawmakers voted to convene that year in San Francisco. They used the Merchants' Exchange Building, an imposing three-story structure, for the 1862 session. At the end of that session, they left to return to Sacramento. That Merchants building, majestic as it was, did not survive the 1906 earthquake. It's confusing to some, according to the California State Library, because a new "Merchants Exchange" was actually built in 1904 before the original fell. That one sits at 465 California Street in San Francisco, a mere six blocks from where the temporary Capitol of 1862 stood.Speaking of that flooding...the Sacramento Capitol we know now, sitting on a hill, was not originally on a hill. The basement work and cornerstone began near 11th and "M" streets. The cornerstone was laid at the northeast corner in 1861. But because the hill the Capitol now sits on wasn't formed yet, the cornerstone to the capitol is actually six feet under the ground. (Much of the original Sacramento, after those major floods, was raised up to avoid the flooding of the Sacramento River.)But that's not all...twice the capital moved temporarily from Sacramento. Very temporarily.Twice, Benicia got some love again, albeit for a short time.In 1958, the Legislature passed SCR 2, which let Benicia stand as the capital for one day, March 15, 1958, after the building that had acted as the state Capitol for a year became a State Historic Park. In 2000, the Legislature did it again, allowing Benicia to be the capital for another single day on Feb. 16, 2000, for the state's sesquicentennial.At the height of the pandemic, the Capitol building didn't have enough room for social distancing so floor votes were held at the Golden 1 Center.