South Fork American River

The Folsom Lake State Recreation Area surrounds Folsom Lake in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The majority of it is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and is managed by the California Department of Parks and Recreation. It is located near the city of Folsom, California, about 25 miles (40 km) east of Sacramento.

Mormon Island was once a mining town, which had an abundance of Mormon immigrants seeking gold in the American River during the California Gold Rush. Its site is in present-day Sacramento County, California.

Folsom Lake is a reservoir on the American River in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, United States. Folsom Lake with its surrounding Folsom Lake State Recreation Area is one of the most visited parks in the California park system. Located within Placer, El Dorado, and Sacramento Counties, it is about 25 mi (40 km) northeast of Sacramento. The lake surface area is 11,500 acres (4,700 ha), its elevation is 466 ft (142 m), and it has 75 mi (121 km) of undulated shoreline.

Higgins Point is a former mining camp in El Dorado County, California. It was located a half mile west of the center of Salmon Falls. The place was named for the first person to open a store there, an Australian named Higgins. Rich diggings of gold were discovered by Mormons at Higgins Point in 1849. Higgins Point was the first part of Salmon Falls to be laid out as a town, starting in 1853.

The North Fork American River is the longest branch of the American River in Northern California. It is 88 miles (142 km) long from its source at the crest of the Sierra Nevada, near Lake Tahoe, to its mouth at Folsom Lake northeast of Sacramento. Prior to the construction of Folsom Dam the river was about 9 miles (14 km) longer making for a total length of 97 miles (156 km). It rises at Mountain Meadow Lake near the 9,008 ft (2,746 m) peak of Granite Chief in the Tahoe National Forest. Flowing initially northwest, the river soon swings west into a gorge, paralleling the Forest Hill Divide on the south. Big Granite Creek then joins the North Fork of the American River coming in from the right. The canyon shallows as the river turns southwest, carving through the Sierra foothills, then turning abruptly south near Colfax. About 4 miles (6.4 km) downstream, it receives Shirttail Creek from the left then is impounded in Lake Clementine (or North Fork Lake) which is formed by the North Fork Dam, built in 1939 to contain hydraulic mining debris.Below the dam, the river bends south, passing under the Foresthill Bridge, the highest bridge in California, then receives the Middle Fork American River, its largest tributary, from the left. The valley widens as the river flows south past Auburn, soon emptying into the north arm of Folsom Lake, a reservoir formed in 1955 by the Folsom Dam. Its waters merge in the lake with those of the South Fork American River and form the American River, a tributary of the Sacramento River.

Salmon Falls is a former settlement in El Dorado County, California. It was located on the South Fork of the American River 5.5 miles (9 km) south-southwest of Pilot Hill, at an elevation of 469 feet (143 m). It was flooded by Folsom Lake. Nearby were waterfalls from which the place got its name. The site is now registered as California Historical Landmark #571.

El Dorado Hills (El Dorado, Spanish for "The Golden") is an unincorporated town and census-designated place in El Dorado County, California. Located in the Greater Sacramento region of Northern California, it had a population of 50,547 at the 2020 census, up from 42,108 at the 2010 census.

On the night of June 11, 2009, Joanne Witt was murdered by her teenage daughter Tylar and Tylar's boyfriend Steven "Boston" Colver, one or both of whom stabbed Witt 20 times on the upper half of her body. Witt was murdered because she had objected to their relationship as Tylar was only 14, while Colver was 19. When Witt missed two days of work without calling, her supervisor called both law enforcement and Witt's parents. Sheriff's deputies met the parents at Witt's home in El Dorado Hills, California, where they discovered the body. Tylar and Colver were arrested in San Bruno, California, several days later. Two years after the murder, Tylar pled guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Colver was tried and convicted of first degree murder and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. On August 26, 2022, Tylar Witt was granted parole.

Folsom Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the American River of Northern California in the United States, about 25 mi (40 km) northeast of Sacramento. The dam is 340 ft (100 m) high and 1,400 ft (430 m) long, flanked by earthen wing dams. It was completed in 1955, and officially opened the following year. Located at the junction of the north and south forks of the American River, the dam was built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and was transferred to the United States Bureau of Reclamation upon its completion. The dam and its reservoir, Folsom Lake, are part of the Central Valley Project, a multipurpose project that provides flood control, hydroelectricity, irrigation, and municipal water supply. To increase Sacramento's flood protection to 200-year flood protection (meaning that the area is protected from a flood that has a 0.5% chance of occurring in any given year), the Corps of Engineers recently constructed an auxiliary spillway, which was completed in October 2017; it enables Folsom Dam operators to increase outflows to prevent the lake level from reaching or exceeding the height of the main dam gates.Another Central Valley Project dam, Nimbus Dam, is located further down river.

Oak Ridge High School is a public high school in El Dorado Hills, California, United States, 20 miles (32 km) east of Sacramento. It is part of the El Dorado Union High School District. Oak Ridge High School was established in 1980 with 222 students. As of the 2019–20 school year, Oak Ridge High School had 2,470 students. The school's principal is Aaron Palm.

California State Prison, Sacramento (SAC) is a male-only state prison located in the city of Folsom, in Sacramento County, California. The facility is also referenced as Sacramento State Prison, CSP-Sacramento, CSP-SAC, and occasionally, New Folsom or New Folsom Prison which was its official name prior to October 1992.Because the facility is adjacent to Folsom State Prison (FSP), both SAC and FSP share the mailing address: Represa, CA 95671. Represa (translated as "dam" from the Spanish language) is the name given to the State Prison post office because its adjacency to Folsom Dam.The facility houses maximum security prisoners who were difficult to manage at other prisons and who have long sentences.

Hidden Valley (formerly, Union House) is a housing development in an unincorporated area of Placer County, California, adjacent to Granite Bay. Hidden Valley is located 4.25 miles (6.8 km) east-southeast of Rocklin. It lies at an elevation of 436 feet (133 m).Hidden Valley was established in 1950 and consists of semi-rural housing lots surrounding 180 acres of pasture and small lakes. It was originally planned as a retirement community, due to its rural setting, but it has since become a bedroom community for the Sacramento metropolitan area. It was once informally called the "Aerojet enclave" for the large number of executives of the aerospace company who resided in the area.