Sacramento River
California’s largest river, the backbone of its Central Valley water system
The Sacramento River supplies more than 80 percent of the fresh water that flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in an average year, making it the main artery of California's water system and the state's largest river. It begins near Mount Shasta and runs about 400 miles (640 km) south through the northern Central Valley, draining 26,500 square miles (69,000 km²). It joins the San Joaquin in the delta and reaches San Francisco Bay through Suisun Bay. Among rivers of the contiguous United States that drain to the Pacific, only the Columbia carries more water.
Shasta Dam, finished in 1945, holds back the upper river as the anchor of the federal Central Valley Project, which moves water from the wetter north to farms and cities farther south. Gold made the river famous first. The 1848 strike at Coloma on the American River, a tributary, turned the riverside settlement at the confluence into Sacramento, now the state capital. The river still supports the southernmost large runs of chinook salmon in North America, second only to the Columbia on the West Coast, though returns have fallen steeply since the early 2000s.