California’s largest river flows 400 miles from its headwaters near Mount Shasta to the San Francisco Bay. Its shape resembles a child’s scribbles in places, but the Sacramento River provides a demanding region with its most precious resource: fresh water. Take a trip with us along the state’s unsung architect, which paved a route that would be traversed by steamships, crisscrossed by highways, and floated by inner-tubers.
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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INDIGENOUS ROOTS
Many of the first people who lived in Northern California, long before our cities’ namesakes arrived and forcibly claimed the land, made their homes on the banks of the river. It sustained them with water and food, with transportation and tools.
SPECIES COUNT
Above the waterline, 300 bird species nest in trees along the river, migrating throughout all four seasons. The riparian habitat shelters river otters, turtles, jackrabbits, and deer; along the shores, mountain lions and bobcats forage for food.
HIGHLIGHT REEL
Chinook salmon—or king salmon, the most valuable type in the West—swim in the river year-round, as do steelhead, sturgeon, and lampreys. The Chinook spawn in the river before migrating to the brackish bay, then the open ocean.
THIRST TRAP
Some 75 percent of California’s water comes from north of Sacramento, but 80 percent of the demand for it comes from the southern two-thirds of the state. The river supports two million acres of farmland in the Central Valley, with water sourced mostly from melted Sierra Nevada snowpack.
DISAPPEARING ACT
The river’s fish populations—especially salmon—are very low owing to warming waters and drought, and swaths of valley farmland are already fallow. Were the river to disappear, hydroelectricity-producing dams would shut down and hundreds of thousands of homes would lose power.•
Jessica Blough is a freelance writer. A former associate editor at Alta Journal, Blough is a graduate of Tufts University where she was editor in chief of the Tufts Daily.
