Top Things to Do in Sacramento

Sacramento sits where the Sacramento and American Rivers meet. That single junction turned this California capital into a supply depot for the Gold Rush and the western terminus of the first transcontinental railroad. Those two facts explain the city's character: pragmatic, industrious, quietly proud. It does not perform importance. Mornings carry a faint green coolness from the river corridors. By afternoon in July the valley heat is dry and absolute, bleaching color from the pavement and driving everyone toward shade and cold drinks. Old Sacramento's wooden boardwalks creak underfoot. Iron-shuttered storefronts face the river. The smell of muddy water and oak woodland drifts in on the westward breeze. The city's best argument for a longer visit is its range. Drive ten minutes east of the Gold Rush waterfront and you are in a grid of Victorian homes shaded by enormous London planes and sycamores. Restaurants serve food that would embarrass cities three times Sacramento's size. Drive an hour east and you are at the put-in for some of California's most exhilarating whitewater. Sacramento's evening light in autumn, the valley sun going low and amber through the oak canopy, is something visitors rarely anticipate and always remember. Sacramento works best as both destination and launching point. Napa Valley's vine rows and Sonoma's farmstead wineries are closer by car from here than from San Francisco. The foothill towns of Gold Country, Nevada City's Victorian main street and Roseville's expanding arts scene, sit forty-five minutes up the hill. The Sacramento Delta, with its flat-water channels and drawbridge towns, stretches west toward the bay. Any guide to things to do in Sacramento has to account for this geography: the city's character and its surroundings are inseparable.