Cosumnes River Preserve

Holds a very special place among California landscapes. The Cosumnes is a small river, a mere 80 miles long. Its headwaters in the El Dorado National Forest rise at only 8,000' above sea level.  From mostly rain, but also snow melt, the river's water meanders from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Central Valley, just south of Sacramento. Yet the Cosumnes River is far more important than its size would indicate. It is the only remaining unregulated river on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. In its lower reaches, it flows through one of the biologically richest regions in California's Central Valley, before merging with the Mokelumne River to flow into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and eventually the Pacific Ocean. The Cosumnes River Preserve was created to safeguard much of this unique landscape.