Sacramento can feel like living in a park.

The city’s tree canopy is thick with elms, oaks, sycamores, and hundreds more species that together cover nearly a quarter of the urban landscape.

It wasn’t always so. When settlers arrived during the Gold Rush-era, the Central Valley region was mostly covered by grasses. Finding the summers intolerably hot, the newcomers planted shade trees that flourished in the rich soil at the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers.

A tree-loving culture developed that was promoted by influential residents like the editor of the Sacramento Bee, C.K. McClatchy, who ran front-page obituaries for dead trees.

In time, the capital city took the nickname “City of Trees.”

So it was galling to some proud Sacramentans last year when the city erased the “City of Trees” slogan from a prominent water tower next to the 5 freeway. In its place was painted “America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.”

A team at M.I.T. measured Sacramento’s tree canopy. (Treepedia)

The move had been prompted by Sacramento’s tourism agency, which thought the dining theme would lure more visitors. What’s more, they argued, a bunch of California cities also use the “City of Trees” motto.

Still, there is evidence to suggest Sacramento is uniquely deserving of the title. An ongoing survey of more than two dozen international cities by researchers from M.I.T. found that Sacramento had among the densest tree canopies, beating out places like Seattle, Boston, Amsterdam and Paris.

Opponents of the water tower change pressured the city to reconsider with a petition that got more than 4,000 signatures. Now, officials say, a compromise is in the works: squeezing both slogans on the tower.

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