SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

Saturday morning, the American River set as the backdrop for a massive community cleanup as 1,200 volunteers spread across 20 locations along the 23-mile American River Parkway, giving new life to one of Sacramento’s most beloved wildland corridors.

“There are about 8 million individual visits each year on the parkway, and when you compare that for example to Yosemite National Park that's over twice as many people as visit Yosemite every year,” said Dan Hall, noting the parkway’s outsized role in daily life across the region. He said the day’s effort is designed to match that scale of use, neighbors, families and civic groups collecting the trash that doesn’t belong in nature.

“That’s what life is all about, it's about service. It's about giving back. If we don't gi

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