Mt. Tamalpais Outdoor Theater
History
The Mountain Theater on Mount Tamalpais is a stone amphitheater cut into the Marin hillside roughly two thousand feet above the Bay, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s on a site used for outdoor performance since 1913. It has no walls, no roof and no permanent sound system; audiences sit on serpentine rock terraces facing the bay. In June 1967 it hosted the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival, generally counted the first of the large rock festivals and the week-before precursor to Monterey Pop. It also drew smaller, more political gatherings -- benefits and peace rallies that wanted an afternoon in the open air rather than a ballroom at night.
Its Place in the Scene
The outdoor counterweight to the indoor ballroom circuit. Shows on Mount Tamalpais were daytime, scenic and usually tied to a cause, and the posters made for them sit slightly outside the numbered Fillmore and Avalon series -- which is part of why they are scarcer and, to collectors, often stranger.