Sacramento Valley

The Sacramento Valley is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies north of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the Sacramento River. It encompasses all or parts of ten Northern California counties. Although many areas of the Sacramento Valley are rural, it contains several urban areas, including the state capital, Sacramento.

Geography

The Sacramento River and its tributaries dominate the geography of the Sacramento Valley. Rising in the various mountain ranges (the various Northern Coast Ranges to the west, the southern Siskiyou Mountains to the north, and the northern Sierra Nevada to the east) that define the shape of the valley, they provide water for agricultural, industrial, residential, and recreation uses. Most of the rivers are heavily dammed and diverted.

The terrain of the Sacramento Valley is primarily flat grasslands that become lusher as one moves east from the rain shadow of the Coast Ranges toward the Sierras. Unlike the San Joaquin Valley, which in its pre-irrigation state was a vegetation-hostile desert, the somewhat less arid Sacramento Valley had significant tracts of forest prior to the arrival of settlers of European ancestry. Most of it was cut down during the California Gold Rush and the ensuing wave of white American settlement. Although there are still some heavily tree-populated areas such as the greater Sacramento area.

Sacramento Valley (Arizona)

The Sacramento Valley of northwestern Arizona is a north-south trending valley west and southwest of Kingman in Mohave County. The valley lies just east of the southern section of the Black Mountains. Interstate 40 in Arizona traverses the valley north-south.

The Sacramento Wash is the first southerly drainage south of the Havasu-Mohave Lakes Watershed entering the east bank of the south-flowing Colorado River. The Sacramento Wash Watershed flows south-then-westerly into the Colorado; Kingman lies in the northeast of the Sacramento Wash Watershed on the water divide with the Hualapai Wash Watershed lying to the east, that flows north into the Colorado River as it enters Lake Mead.

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Coordinates: 34°48′53″N 114°09′38″W / 34.8147293°N 114.1605075°W / 34.8147293; -114.1605075