Stinson Beach is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Marin County, California, on the west coast of the United States.

[5] Stinson Beach is about a 35-minute drive from the Golden Gate Bridge on California State Route 1 (the Shoreline Highway).

Stinson Beach is a popular day trip for people in the San Francisco Bay Area and for tourists visiting Northern California.

Although most visitors arrive by private car, Stinson Beach is linked to Marin City by a daily bus service, and the network of hiking trails around Mount Tamalpais also reaches the town.

[7] Prior to the European colonization of California, the area was inhabited by groups of the Coast Miwok people.

Visitors could ride the train to West Point Inn and then hike or arrange a stagecoach to take them to the beach.

In 1963, Merrill and Joann Grohman started the Pacific Sun, Stinson Beach's only newspaper of general circulation.

It began operations in the back of a Stinson Beach's larger grocery store, Bill's Superette, in the space previously housing the Post Office.

[9][10] The surf off Stinson Beach is within an area known as the Red Triangle, where there have been an unusually high number of shark attacks.

[11] Marin County added 12 tsunami warning signs to the Stinson Beach shoreline in 2012 to explain the risk to beachgoers.

Like much of the California coast, summer afternoons are often cool and windy (and usually foggy) as winds blow in off the cold ocean.

On the second Sunday of June, the town serves as the ending point for the annual running of the Dipsea Race, the second-oldest footrace in the U.S.

The California Road Club holds its Mount Tamalpais Hill Climb, one of the oldest bicycle races in the West, in early fall.

It features local restaurants and merchants selling a wide variety of foods, trinkets, clothing, art, and novelty items at different booths.

It is a slice of life, pure Americana, and always contested both during the actual event and then afterward in the local bars of Smiley's and the Sand Dollar, where the winners' trophies are displayed.

Residents, landowners, and summer people important in the development, life, and culture of Stinson Beach.

Stinson Beach has been the setting and filming location for several movies, including: The town was mentioned in an episode of M*A*S*H—"The Merchant of Korea".

In the episode, BJ borrows $200 from Charles to wire home to his wife as a down payment on the purchase of a one-acre lot with "trees, the beach, a view of San Francisco...everything!"

George Frayne (Commander Cody) wrote a song about Stinson Beach entitled "Midnight on The Strand".

[57] The poet Robert Duncan wrote his influential collection Opening the Field at a house in Stinson Beach.

[60] Author Danielle Steel writes about Stinson Beach in her novel One Day at a Time (Dell, 2009, ISBN 978-0-440-24333-5).