Stinson Beach. Stinson Beach is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Marin County, California, on the west coast of the United States. Stinson Beach is located 2.5 miles east-southeast of Bolinas, at an elevation of 26 feet. The population of the Stinson Beach CDP was 541 at the 2020 census. Stinson Beach is about a 35-minute drive from the Golden Gate Bridge on California State Route 1. It is near important attractions such as Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, and Mount Tamalpais. It has a long beach, and the cold water produces fog throughout the year. 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. The beach is one of the cleanest in the state, and sandy, unlike the rockier neighboring beach in Bolinas. Nathan H. Stinson bought land at the site in 1866. In 1870, the first road was built along the Pacific coast from Sausalito, and a tent settlement sprang up amongst the willow trees at the beach, which gave rise to the town's original name, Willow Camp. The Mt. Tamalpais & Muir Woods Railway opened in 1896, making Willow Camp more accessible. Visitors could ride the train to West Point Inn and then hike or arrange a stagecoach to take them to the beach. In 1906, refugees from the San Francisco earthquake came to the area and built some of the area's first businesses. Stinson Beach became the official town name in 1916, in honor of the largest landowners, Rose and Nathan Stinson. 1916 photo postcard of Stinson Beach, showing Airey's Hotel to the left The first post office opened in 1916. In 1939, the beach was sold to Marin County. It was transferred to the state of California in 1950, and was eventually transferred to the National Park Service in 1977. 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. The Sun moved to San Rafael in 1966. In 2002, a surfer was attacked by a 12-to-15-foot-long great white shark while surfing off Stinson Beach. The young man survived, but received more than 100 stitches to close his wounds. The attack was the second in Stinson Beach, and the 13th in Marin County since 1952. In 1998, Jonathan Kathrein was attacked by a great white shark while bodyboarding. His injury from the shark bite required over 600 stitches. 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. Marin County added 12 tsunami warning signs to the Stinson Beach shoreline in 2012 to explain the risk to beachgoers. Stinson Beach is located in southern Marin County at, between Bolinas and Muir Beach. It is 15 miles by road northwest of Sausalito and 20 miles northwest of San Francisco. The CDP has a total area of 0.89 square miles, all of it recorded as land. Stinson Beach has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated Csb on climate maps. Like much of the California coast, summer afternoons are often cool and windy as winds blow in off the cold ocean. Adjacent sea surface temperatures are typically in the low to mid 50s F year-round. It receives more rain than other coast cities in the San Francisco Bay Area in this latitude with 1,034.70 mm of rain.