Excerpted from the Almanac of American Politics California: Third District

Until recently, Sacramento was chiefly the metropolis of a fertile valley that produced a marvelous variety of crops: rice, plums, almonds, olives, asparagus, pears, hops, beans, celery, onions, potatoes, plus caviar-yielding sturgeon in pools of filtered water. The farmlands remain, and the capital city flourishes as a center of government; greater Sacramento is one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country.

Almost all the growth has been away from the flood plain of the Sacramento River, in the higher land east of the city that eventually turns into hills rising toward the Sierra Nevadas. Here is the Mother Lode country in Amador and Calaveras Counties, which filled up with people in the Gold Rush days, when Mark Twain was inspired to write his story about the famous jumping frog of Calaveras County.

Only in recent decades has Calaveras County had more than the 16,000 people who lived there in Twain's time, but some things have not changed. When an animal-rights group called for cancellation of the annual Jumping Frog Jubilee, a local official said that the frogs are not tortured and that the jubilee will continue.

The 3rd Congressional District includes much of suburban Sacramento, some territory to the west and some of the Mother Lode country in Amador and Calaveras Counties to the east, where it reaches over the Sierras to Alpine County, the smallest county in California (1,208 people in 2000) and the Nevada line.

The district's ungainly shape contains only a little territory--northern Sacramento suburbs that have 32% of the district's population--that was in the old district before 2001 redistricting. But more than 80% of the people in the district live in Sacramento County, in suburbs like Carmichael, Citrus Heights and Arden-Arcade (which is shared with the 5th) and the old town of Folsom.