Field measurements of water depth were acquired from a reach of the upper Sacramento River in northern California, September 12-14, 2017, to support research on salmon habitat and geomorphic change along the Sacramento River and, more broadly, remote sensing of rivers. The depth measurements included in this data release were obtained by wading the shallow channel margins with RTK GPS receivers and measuring water surface elevations along the water's edge and bed elevations within the channel; depths were calculated by subtracting bed elevations from the nearest water surface elevation. For the deeper areas representing most of the channel, depths were recorded along a series of cross-sections by a SonTek RiverSurveyor S5 acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and an Ohmex SonarMite echo sounder, both deployed from a jet boat. The spatial location of each measurement was obtained via GPS receivers: Trimble R8 and R10 RTK rovers for the wading and echo sounder measurements and a differential GPS included as part of the RiverSurveyor S5 ADCP instrument package. The map projection and datum for these data are UTM Zone 10 N and NAD83, respectively. The wading-, echo sounder-, and ADCP-based depth measurements were cross-calibrated to one another and are combined for the purposes of this data release, which consists of a comma-delimited (*.csv) text file with three columns: East_m, North_m, and Depth_m; the units of the spatial coordinates and the depths are meters. This ground-based data set played a critical role in developing improved methods for mapping river bathymetry from remotely sensed data.