Experience the best of Stockton

Stockton lies on the San Joaquin River where it spreads into the Delta, the maze of channels and islands that drains the Sierra Nevada toward San Francisco Bay. Founded in 1849 as a supply base for gold miners, it is now an inland port with a deep-water channel linking it to the sea, and the cranes and grain elevators on the waterfront show it. The Haggin Museum in Victory Park displays art and the history of the valley.

The University of the Pacific, chartered in 1851, has a leafy campus of brick buildings with lawns. Boating, bass fishing and houseboat trips on the Delta's quiet waterways start nearby, and the vineyards of Lodi, known for old-vine Zinfandel, lie a short way to the north. Gold Country towns and the Sierra foothills rise to the east.

Farmland feeds the table, with asparagus, cherries, tomatoes, walnuts and almonds, and Stockton has a long-established Filipino community, part of its Little Manila heritage, which shows in its bakeries and restaurants. Summers are dry and hot, and tule fog settles over the valley in winter.