The Sacramento River is an important watercourse of Northern

Northern California

Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...

 and Central

Central California

Central California, sometimes referenced as Mid-State, is an area of California south of the San Francisco Bay Area and north of Southern California...

 California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The largest river in California, it rises on the eastern slopes of the Klamath Mountains

Klamath Mountains

The Klamath Mountains, which include the Siskiyou, Marble, Scott, Trinity, Trinity Alps, Salmon, and northern Yolla-Bolly Mountains, are a rugged lightly populated mountain range in northwest California and southwest Oregon in the United States...

, and after a journey south of over 400 miles (643.7 km), empties into Suisun Bay

Suisun Bay

Suisun Bay is a shallow tidal estuary at in northern California, USA. It lies at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, forming the entrance to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an inverted river delta...

, an arm of the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

, and thence to the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. The river drains an area of about 27500 square miles (71,224.7 km²) in the northern half of the state, mostly within a region bounded by the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada known as the Sacramento Valley

Sacramento Valley

The Sacramento Valley is the portion of the California Central Valley that lies to the north of the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta in the U.S. state of California. It encompasses all or parts of ten counties.-Geography:...

.