About Mount Shasta

Mount Shasta is a city in Siskiyou County, California, located at around 3,600 feet (1,100 m) on the flanks of Mount Shasta, a prominent northern California landmark. The city is less than 9 miles (14 km) southwest of the summit of its namesake volcano. As of the 2010 Census the city had a population of 3,394, down from 3,624 at the 2000 census.

The town of Mount Shasta is located in the Shasta Cascade area of Northern California. Visitors use Mount Shasta as a base for trout fishing in the nearby Sacramento, McCloud and Klamath rivers, for climbing at Mount Shasta, Castle Crags or the Trinity Alps, or to view scenery. Both alpine and cross-country skiing runs are available nearby as well as biking or hiking to waterfalls, streams and lakes in the area, including nearby Mossbrae Falls, Lake Siskiyou, Castle Lake and Shasta Lake.

The site of present-day Mount Shasta City was within the range of the Okwanuchu tribe of Native Americans. During the 1820s, early Euro-American trappers and hunters first passed through the area, following the path of the Siskiyou Trail. The Siskiyou Trail was based on a network of ancient Native American footpaths connecting California and the Pacific Northwest. The discovery of gold at nearby Yreka, California in 1851, dramatically increased traffic along the Siskiyou Trail and through the site of present-day Mount Shasta. Pioneer Ross McCloud built one of the first lumber mills in the area, near the site of the present Sisson Museum. The completion of a stagecoach road between Yreka and Upper Soda Springs in the late 1850s led to the building of Sisson's Hotel, as a stop for weary travelers, and as a staging ground for adventuresome tourists intending to climb Mount Shasta.

The town is placed on the distal gently sloping southwest flanks of Mount Shasta, with the chief surficial soils being Quaternary alluvium. This alluvium is adjacent to and probably underlain by volcanic clastic rock deposited by Mount Shasta in the course of its development. Groundwater elevation is approximately at the elevation of the underlying native black peat soil. Where it occurs this peat, of approximately two feet thickness, is underlain by stream deposit sands and gravels.