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Mt. Tam’s wild history above San Francisco
Just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a 2,571-foot mountain rises out of Marin County with redwood canyons on its slopes and 150 miles of open sky on its clearest days.
Locals have called it Mt. Tam for generations, and it has been pulling San Franciscans off the pavement since the Gold Rush.
The story behind this mountain runs from ancient Miwok villages to a railroad with 281 curves to the dirt roads where mountain biking was born.
Wikimedia Commons/Oscar Vasquez
The Coast Miwok called it home for thousands of years
The mountain didn’t start with tourists. Coast Miwok people lived on these slopes for thousands of years before Spanish explorers showed up in 1770 and named the peak…