Sacramento was built on a flood plain at the confluence of two rivers, and the city’s answer to its own summer was, from the beginning, trees. The State Capitol grounds were planted starting in 1872 — sycamores, valley oaks, deodar cedars, a memorial grove of redwoods on the east end — and the park is now one of the densest forty acres of urban canopy on the West Coast. Walk the perimeter at 1 PM in July and the shade is essentially continuous.
The picks below string the Capitol grounds together with the K Street corridor and the California Museum a few blocks south. The trick is to use the diagonals through the park — the curving paths Olmsted-style laid out in the 1880s — rather than the straight perimeter sidewalks, which are open at the corners. The 10th Street side is the shadiest. The N Street side gets the wind from the Delta in the late afternoon.