Sacramento has been called “the City of Trees” since at least 1855, making it one of the oldest civic nicknames in California. The title isn’t just marketing. The city sits in a broad, flat valley where early residents planted thousands of trees to shade streets and homes from intense Central Valley heat, creating one of the densest urban forests in the United States. Today, more than two dozen tree species each make up over one percent of the city’s canopy, giving Sacramento a remarkably diverse tree population that’s visible from almost any street corner.
How the Nickname Started
Sacramento’s original landscape was not especially forested. The city sits at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers, and much of the surrounding valley was open grassland, marsh, and scattered oaks when settlers arrived during the Gold Rush. As the city grew in the 1850s, residents began planting trees aggressively along streets and around homes to combat the punishing summer heat, which regularly pushes past 100°F. By 1855, the nickname “City of Trees” was already in use, a recognition that the urban canopy was becoming one of the most striking things about the young capital city.
That deliberate planting tradition continued for more than a century. City planners and homeowners favored large shade trees, and Sacramento’s deep alluvial soil and access to river water made conditions ideal for growth. The result is a city where mature trees arch over entire streets, forming green tunnels that feel out of place in California’s dry interior.
What Trees Actually Grow There
Sacramento’s urban forest is unusually diverse. A 2018 city resource analysis identified more than two dozen species that each account for at least one percent of the total tree population. The single most common tree is the London planetree, making up about 15.5% of the canopy. These are the massive, mottled-bark shade trees you’ll see lining older downtown streets. After that, the mix drops off quickly: Chinese pistache (5.2%), Japanese zelkova (4.4%), crapemyrtle (4.4%), and ornamental pear species (4.3%) round out the top five.
Native species hold their own in the count. Valley oak, the iconic California native, represents about 4.2% of all trees. Coast redwoods, which most people associate with Northern California’s foggy coast, make up 3.3%. Coastal live oak adds another 1.4%. You’ll also find sweetgum, red maple, ginkgo, southern magnolia, and several species of elm scattered throughout neighborhoods. Even palms have a presence: Mexican fan palms and Canary Island date palms each account for over one percent of the total.
This variety is partly intentional. Urban foresters have pushed for species diversity to avoid the kind of catastrophic loss that cities like Chicago experienced when Dutch elm disease wiped out their dominant tree in the mid-20th century. No single pest or disease can threaten the whole canopy when dozens of species share the load.
How Sacramento Compares to Other Cities
MIT’s Senseable City Lab developed a tool called Treepedia that measures how much green canopy is visible from street level across cities worldwide. Sacramento scored a Green View Index of 23.6%, placing it among the top-ranked cities globally. That number reflects the percentage of canopy coverage visible from street-level vantage points, so it captures what you’d actually experience walking or driving through the city rather than just measuring parkland from a satellite.
For context, many major cities score well below 20%. Sacramento’s combination of wide residential streets, large lot sizes, and a century-plus planting tradition gives it an advantage that denser, more vertical cities struggle to match.
Cooling and Environmental Benefits
In a city where summer temperatures regularly exceed 100°F, shade is not just pleasant. It’s functional infrastructure. A Sacramento County study found that mid-day air temperatures drop between 0.04°C and 0.2°C for every one-percent increase in canopy cover. That may sound small in isolation, but across an entire city with substantial canopy, the cumulative cooling effect translates to meaningfully lower electricity bills and fewer heat-related health emergencies.
The trees also pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. U.S. Forest Service research calculated that Sacramento’s urban forest removes approximately 304,000 metric tons of carbon annually, a service valued at roughly $3.3 million per year, or about 55 cents per tree. That figure accounts for the carbon the trees absorb minus the emissions from maintaining them (pruning, removal, watering, and equipment use). Beyond carbon, the canopy intercepts stormwater, filters air pollutants, and provides habitat for birds and other urban wildlife.
The Water Tower Controversy
For decades, a water tower visible from Interstate 5 welcomed visitors to Sacramento with the words “City of Trees.” In March 2017, the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau pushed the city council to rebrand the tower with a new slogan: “America’s Farm to Fork Capital.” The change reflected the region’s agricultural identity. Sacramento sits amid more than 1.5 million acres of farmland and hosts over 40 year-round farmers markets.
The decision drew immediate backlash. Residents took to social media to protest the loss of the original slogan, arguing that the tree canopy was Sacramento’s most distinctive and beloved feature. For many longtime residents, “City of Trees” wasn’t just a tourism tagline. It described something they could see and feel every day walking under the canopy. The Farm to Fork branding has stuck on the tower, but the older nickname hasn’t gone away. City documents, urban forestry plans, and locals themselves still use it freely, and the urban forest that inspired it continues to grow.