Mount Tamalpais. Mount Tamalpais, known locally as Mount Tam, is a peak in Marin County, California, United States, often considered symbolic of Marin County.
Much of Mount Tamalpais is protected within public lands such as Mount Tamalpais State Park, the Marin Municipal Water District watershed, and National Park Service land, such as Muir Woods. The name Tamalpais was first recorded in 1845.
It comes from the Coast Miwok name for this mountain, támal pájiá¹£, meaning west hill. Various different folk etymologies also exist, but they are unsubstantiated.
One holds that it comes from the Spanish Tamal país, meaning Tamal country, Tamal being the name that the Spanish missionaries gave to the Coast Miwok people. Another holds that the name is the Coast Miwok word for sleeping maiden and is taken from a Legend of the Sleeping Maiden Supposedly, the legend is that the mountain's contour reflects the reclining profile of a young Miwok girl who was saved from a rival tribe by the shuddering of the mountain.
However, this legend actually has no basis in Coast Miwok myth and is instead a piece of Victorian-era apocrypha. The Sleeping Lady story was the creation of playwright Dan Totheroh, who wrote the first play performed at Mt. Tamalpais' Mountain Theater about Tamelpa, the Mountain Queen. Another suggests a tie to the Eurasian origins of the Miwoks, where pais means place and tamal is a tribe in Si
Much of Mount Tamalpais is protected within public lands such as Mount Tamalpais State Park, the Marin Municipal Water District watershed, and National Park Service land, such as Muir Woods. The name Tamalpais was first recorded in 1845.
It comes from the Coast Miwok name for this mountain, támal pájiá¹£, meaning west hill. Various different folk etymologies also exist, but they are unsubstantiated.
One holds that it comes from the Spanish Tamal país, meaning Tamal country, Tamal being the name that the Spanish missionaries gave to the Coast Miwok people. Another holds that the name is the Coast Miwok word for sleeping maiden and is taken from a Legend of the Sleeping Maiden Supposedly, the legend is that the mountain's contour reflects the reclining profile of a young Miwok girl who was saved from a rival tribe by the shuddering of the mountain.
However, this legend actually has no basis in Coast Miwok myth and is instead a piece of Victorian-era apocrypha. The Sleeping Lady story was the creation of playwright Dan Totheroh, who wrote the first play performed at Mt. Tamalpais' Mountain Theater about Tamelpa, the Mountain Queen. Another suggests a tie to the Eurasian origins of the Miwoks, where pais means place and tamal is a tribe in Si
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