Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has drawn humans for millennia. Its allure is not gold, towering mountains, or deep blue sea, but what has always mattered most: water, rich soil, and the resources they yield.

The Delta’s first people thrived in its abundance. But their population would plummet from disease and genocidal campaigns brought by new arrivals in the 1800s: Europeans and Americans.

After the Gold Rush, settlers from America, Portugal, Holland, China, Japan, the Philippines, and Punjab drained the Delta’s wetlands to farm its fertile soils.

Today, the Delta’s edges are increasingly metropolitan, but farming still dominates its interior, where two-lane roads line rivers, century-old bridges convey modern traffic, and “legacy” towns house settlers’ descendants.

And two-thirds of Californians depend on its waters, a challenge for fish, wildlife, and humans in the Delta. Native tribes, once pushed aside, find growing demand for their wisdom about managing this landscape.

The National Heritage Area

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area (NHA) was created by Congress (PDF) in 2019, and the Delta Protection Commission was designated as the local coordinating entity.

The Commission’s Management Plan was approved by the U.S. Department of Interior on Jan. 16, 2025, and adopted by the Commission on March 20, 2025. The final Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Management Plan is here (26MB PDF).

The Delta Protection Commission created an NHA Advisory Committee on July 18, 2024, to guide implementation of the Management Plan. This committee picks up where the Management Plan Advisory Committee left off after the Management Plan was submitted to Interior.

How National Heritage Areas Work

NHAs serve as a regional organization or “big tent” under which a variety of interests and organizations convene. They work in the following areas:

• Historic Preservation – preserving and protecting special places and living traditions.
• Cultural Conservation and the Arts – creative placemaking through conserving living traditions and using arts as an economic driver.
• Interpretation and Education – sharing the places, traditions, and the important stories they hold with visitors and students of all ages.
• Natural Resource Stewardship and Enhancement – conserving natural resources and building on scenic and recreational opportunities for
people to enjoy.
• Heritage Tourism – driving visitation by supporting marketing and/or developing tourism infrastructure.
• Community Revitalization and Economic Development – using heritage assets as economic drivers through tourism and revival.

Learn More

Fact sheet (PDF)

• Visit the California Delta – our website exploring the historic, cultural, and recreational riches of the NHA
• Delta NHA fact sheet (PDF)
• Delta Reading List
• National Park Service NHA website
• Alliance of National Heritage Areas and its Heart and Soul magazine

For more information about the Delta NHA, please email  DPC@delta.ca.gov.

Related Work

As part of the Commission’s work on Delta Heritage and the National Heritage Area, we engage in public education, historic preservation, tourism and recreation development, visitor amenities, and economic development activities, including:

Delta Heritage Courier, a bi-monthly e-newsletter. Read the latest issue | Sign up

Delta Heritage Forum, a free, full-day event each year focused on preserving and telling Delta stories, and providing opportunities for partnerships, collaboration, and networking. Learn more about upcoming and past Forums.

The Delta Narratives project, which prepared essays that connected the history of the Delta to important regional and national trends and provided recommended actions to preserve and share these narratives, which have played a role in the development of the National Heritage Area. Review the report, essays, and appendices (PDF).

Delta Narrative Curriculum for fourth grade, which grew out of the Delta Narratives project.

Delta Anthology, a Commission-sponsored project, which was an outgrowth of the Delta Narratives project. It focused on developing a collection of writings intended for high school and college readers as well as for those interested in the region’s rich culture and heritage. The project resulted in this book.

Our Partners

The Delta Protection Commission coordinates the National Heritage Area, but visitors experience its riches through our partners: museums, parks, cultural attractions, agritourism destinations, landmark businesses and more. Interested in becoming a partner organization? Learn more here.

We’re proud to have the support of the following partners: