The Pacific Sun was founded in April 1963 in California by Merrill and Joann Grohman in the back of a Stinson Beach grocery store.

Senator Barbara Boxer worked as a reporter for the Pacific Sun for two years in the 1970s, winning a Press Club award for a 1973 story on a state supreme court controversy.

[3] Embarcadero Media, publisher of community weeklies in Palo Alto, Mountain View and Pleasanton, purchased The Sun from McNamara in 2004.

[8] Metro restored circulation cuts that had occurred under the previous ownership and commissioned well-known typographer Jim Parkinson to redraw the Sun's nameplate.

Owner Dan Pulcrano promised “investment and creative vision... to produce a free weekly that’s fresh, original and true to its history.”[9] In December 2019, the Sun commemorated its 55th year of publication with longtime Mill Valley resident Sammy Hagar on its cover.