The site of the present-day city of Mount Shasta was within the range of the Okwanuchu tribe of Native Americans.

During the 1820s, early Euro-American trappers and hunters first passed through the area, following the path of the Siskiyou Trail.

The Siskiyou Trail was based on a network of ancient Native American footpaths connecting California and the Pacific Northwest.

The discovery of gold at nearby Yreka, California in 1851 dramatically increased traffic along the Siskiyou Trail and through the site of present-day Mount Shasta.

Pioneer Ross McCloud built one of the first lumber mills in the area, near the site of the present Sisson Museum.

The completion of a stagecoach road between Yreka and Upper Soda Springs in the late 1850s led to the building of Sisson's Hotel, as a stop for weary travelers, and as a staging ground for adventuresome tourists intending to climb Mount Shasta.

[6] After 1886 it was known as Sisson after a local businessman, Justin Hinckley Sisson who ran a stagecoach inn and tavern, Strawberry Valley Station, as well as donated the land for the town site and the Central Pacific Railroad station in 1886.

[6] The 1887 completion of the Central Pacific Railroad, built along the line of the Siskiyou Trail, brought a dramatic increase in tourism, lumbering, and population into Mount Shasta.

The early 1900s saw the influx of a large number of Italian immigrants to Mount Shasta and neighboring towns, most of whom were employed in the timber industry.

[12] The settlement is on the distal gently sloping southwest flanks of Mount Shasta, with the chief surficial soils being Quaternary alluvium.

This alluvium is adjacent to and probably underlain by volcanic clastic rock deposited by Mount Shasta in the course of its development.

Where it occurs this peat, of approximately two feet thickness, is underlain by stream deposit sands and gravels.

Mount Shasta to the east forces moisture out of the air as it rises and cools, and the dip in the Klamath Mountains allows more moisture to reach inland, so the city receives more precipitation than the semiarid region to the north.

This means that in the winter, the city gets nearly 103 inches or 2.62 metres of snowfall despite its low 3,600 feet (1,100 m) elevation.

[21] Visitors use the city as a base for trout fishing in the nearby Sacramento, McCloud and Klamath rivers,[22][23] for climbing at Mount Shasta, Castle Crags or the Trinity Alps, or to view scenery.

[28] Federally, Mount Shasta is in California's 1st congressional district, represented by Republican Doug LaMalfa.