Aug 24, 2021 8:00 AM
Gareth Loy
The Tourist Club - The Century-Old Mt. Tam Group You've Never Heard Of

In 1912, just four years after Muir Woods was established, a small group of European immigrants bought a small
plot of land on the shoulder of Mt. Tam for their hiking club. Called the Tourist Club, it is the San Francisco
branch of Die Naturfreunde (Friends of Nature), which was founded in 1895, in Vienna, Austria. It has grown
into a community of over a half million members. Their motto, “BERG FREI”, affirms that the mountains and
nature belong to us all.

Gareth Loy, the chair of the Club’s History Committee, will share not only the history
of the club’s role in the environmental movement, but also many fabulous, long-forgotten images of Mt. Tam,
the Sierras, and beyond, drawn from the Tourist Club archives.