Things to Do in Sacramento in March
March weather, activities, events & insider tips
March Weather in Sacramento
Temperature, rainfall and humidity at a glance
Is March Right for You?
Weigh the advantages and considerations before booking
- + Camellia season peaks in March — Capitol Park's 300-plus trees hit full bloom, and the Sacramento Camellia Society holds its annual show displaying hundreds of named varieties that have been cultivated here since the city called itself the Camellia Capital of the World. The older specimens, some planted in the 1860s, produce flowers the size of a child's fist, and on a clear morning the park carries a faint floral sweetness that cuts through the usual downtown air.
- + Central Valley almond orchards along Highway 99 between Sacramento and Fresno bloom late February through mid-March in a dense white-pink corridor that stretches for miles. Driving south toward Modesto at peak bloom — windows down, the faintly sweet scent drifting across the agricultural flats — is one of those experiences specific to Sacramento's geography that no tour operator packages properly, which is exactly what makes it worth doing.
- + Sacramento Kings NBA season runs through April at Golden 1 Center on L Street, and March often delivers marquee matchups as teams chase playoff positioning. The arena has a reputation as one of the louder home-court environments in the Western Conference — the kind of place where sound bounces differently than in older buildings, and the crowd is legitimately invested rather than corporate-suite quiet.
- + Low-season pricing and genuine elbow room at the city's major attractions. The California State Railroad Museum, Crocker Art Museum, and Old Sacramento waterfront draw their thickest crowds in summer; in March you can stop and read the interpretive panels at the Railroad Museum without someone leaning over your shoulder.
- − Ten rainy days average means you will almost certainly get rained on at some point. The rains are rarely dramatic — typically grey mornings, 45-minute drizzles, and the specific kind of wet cold that seeps through a light jacket — but if your entire trip revolves around outdoor dining on Sacramento's famous patios, March is a gamble. The R Street Corridor and midtown restaurant strips look very different under umbrellas than they do in September.
- − Delta tule fog can still roll in without warning in early March, overnight and into morning hours. This thick ground fog — a specific Sacramento Valley phenomenon caused by cold air settling over the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — doesn't lift until late morning on the worst days and makes driving to the airport or toward the Central Valley disorienting. It's not mentioned in most travel guides, which is a disservice to first-time visitors.
- − Late March spring break creates a brief pricing spike, for downtown hotels, and the Sacramento Zoo and Discovery Museum fill with families during that week. If you're visiting in the last ten days of March, book accommodations at least three weeks ahead or expect to pay noticeably more for the same rooms.
Year-Round Climate
How March compares to the rest of the year
Best Activities in March
Top things to do during your visit
March is the single best month to visit Capitol Park, a 40-acre (16-hectare) public garden wrapping around the California State Capitol building that most visitors from outside California don't know exists. The park's camellia collection — among the largest in North America — peaks in late February through mid-March with varieties planted as far back as the 1860s, and the dome catches the low winter light in a way that summer photographs can't replicate. Free docent-led tours of the Capitol interior run on weekdays and cover the restored 19th-century Governor's office and legislative chambers in enough detail to make the Gold Rush era feel concrete rather than textbook. The whole experience — park walk plus Capitol tour — takes about three hours without rushing.
Old Sacramento's wooden boardwalk district gets dismissed as a tourist trap — and that reputation is fair for about half the block, where Gold Rush facades now house candy shops. But the California State Railroad Museum, open since 1981 at Second and I Streets, is legitimately one of the finest railroad museums in the country: 21 restored locomotives and railcars, including a sectioned sleeping car that exposes the hidden mechanics of 19th-century overnight travel, fill 100,000 square feet (9,290 square meters) of exhibit space. The smell of machine oil and old timber is specific and real. March is quiet enough here that you can spend two unhurried hours without the summer crowds. The Delta King — a 1927 sternwheeler paddle steamer permanently moored on the waterfront — makes for an unusual lunch stop or overnight stay.
The 32-mile (51.5-km) paved trail running from Old Sacramento east to Folsom Dam is one of the premier urban cycling paths in California, and March hits a particular sweet spot: the grasses along the American River run green from winter rains, early wildflowers are starting on the bluff sections, and the summer heat that turns this ride brutal hasn't arrived. The trail passes through oak woodland and riparian corridors before climbing toward Folsom Lake. Most visitors will find the 15-mile (24-km) section from Discovery Park to Sailor Bar the most rewarding segment, capturing the best of the riverside terrain without requiring a full-day commitment. March rain can leave muddy patches on the unpaved connector trails, but the main tarmac stays rideable throughout.
The Crocker opened in 1872 as the first public art museum west of the Mississippi, and the original Edwin Crocker Gallery — a High Victorian Italianate building connected to a 1989 expansion — remains one of the better museum buildings in California. The permanent collection leans heavily on 19th-century California landscapes (there's a painting of Sacramento in the 1870s alone that justifies the visit), German Romantic paintings collected by Edwin Crocker himself on European tours, and a contemporary California section that tracks the state's art movements from the Bay Area Figurative school forward. In March, the museum runs without summer program crowds, and the courtyard café starts reopening on drier days. First Sunday of every month is free admission — it draws a friendly local crowd rather than gridlock, and the conversations that tend to start near the California landscape paintings are worth having.
Sacramento occupies a strange position as one of America's most important agricultural cities that most food travelers have never prioritized. The Central Valley produces roughly a third of the country's vegetables, and the chefs cooking in the midtown grid have relationships with farms 20 minutes away that their counterparts in San Francisco spend a lot of money trying to replicate. The R Street Corridor — a former warehouse and rail yard stretch between 10th and 20th Streets — has become the clearest expression of this in Sacramento's restaurant geography: wine bars, farm-driven kitchens, and craft spaces that feel less performative than similar districts in larger cities. March is still shoulder season, which means reservations at the better spots — places that fill up three weeks out in October — are often available same-week. The Sacramento Certified Farmers Market at 8th and W Streets, running since 1977, offers early spring produce on Saturdays: blood oranges and Meyer lemons finishing their valley-floor season, early spring lettuces, and whatever the rain has pushed into season.
Most California school children are marched through Sutter's Fort at some point, which means it tends to get dismissed as an attraction aimed at kids. The fort — a working reconstruction of Swiss-German immigrant Johann Sutter's 1840 trading post — sits at 27th and L Street in midtown, almost incongruously surrounded by Victorian houses and modern apartments. The living history demonstrations that run on weekend Saturdays give you a more textured sense of pre-Gold Rush California than the plaques alone: interpreters in period clothing run the blacksmith forge, operate the mill, and answer questions without the staginess that makes some living history sites feel theatrical. The Central California Indian Museum next door covers Native California history through 1850 — a subject Sutter's own story makes impossible to separate from the fort's legacy, and the museum doesn't try to.
March Events & Festivals
What's happening during your visit
Sacramento's St. Patrick's Day parade runs through Old Sacramento along the riverfront, and the city's Irish-American community — present here since the Gold Rush — takes it seriously. The parade route along Front Street ends near the Tower Bridge, and bars along K Street and in midtown run green beer specials from mid-afternoon through the evening. The Old Sacramento waterfront bars and the midtown stretch around 20th and L see the densest post-parade crowds. It's rowdier than you'd expect from a mid-size city — Sacramento State and UC Davis 15 miles (24 km) to the west ensure a younger evening crowd — but the afternoon parade itself is family-oriented and festive rather than purely commercial.
Sacramento hosts the California Camellia Society's competitive show displaying named varieties from private collections across Northern California alongside examples from Capitol Park's historic specimens. The atmosphere is more intimate and passionate than a typical flower show — entries include cultivars developed in Sacramento Valley gardens over 80 or 90 years that exist only in a handful of private collections, and the growers who bring them have strong opinions about petal formation and color breaks that they're happy to share at length. It's one of those events that Sacramento holds with quiet conviction while the rest of California misses entirely.
Essential Tips
What to pack, insider knowledge and common pitfalls