Burning Man Timeline: Everything You Need to Know About This Famous Festival

The Burning Man is one of the most popular events in the United States. It is attended by thousands of people across the nation.

If you are curious about this festival, here's why it is celebrated and how it began.

About the Burning Man Festival

Burning Man Timeline: Everything You Need to Know About This Famous Festival — Dancers at the "Burning Man" festival create patterns with fireworks in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada just prior to burning a five-story, neon-lit effigy of a man on the last night of the week-long festival 06 September. Some 15,000 people attended the 1998 "Burning Man" festival, which reportedly began 13 years ago in San Francisco. MIKE NELSON/AFP via Getty Images

The New York Times explained that the Burning Man started back in June 1986. This event was founded by Jerry James and Larry Harvey, who held a bonfire with their friends on Baker Beach in San Francisco.

Specifically, they burned an eight-foot-tall wooden figure, which historians claim to mark the end of a romantic relationship.

After that, the Burning Man festival has been celebrated yearly. In 2004, Harvey introduced the "10 Principles," which the Burning Man is now focusing on.

These series of guidelines include the following:

Radical Inclusion
Decommodification
Gifting
Civic Responsibility
Communal Effort
Radical Self-expression
Radical Self-reliance
Immediacy
Participation
Leaving No Trace

Using the 10 Principles of Harvey, the Burning Man attendees (called "Burners") use the festival to celebrate art, community, self-reliance, and self-expression.

Popular people, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, also participate in the Burning Man event.

The Burning Man Timeline

ABC 7 provided all the happenings surrounding the Burning Man festival. If you are a Burner or just curious about this social event, here's its timeline until 2023:

1986: The first Burning Man gathering happened in San Francisco.
1991: The U.S. festival was moved to Black Rock City in northwest Nevada. Its participants also reached 250.
2000: Burners reached more than 25,000, which is a great feat for the Burning Man festival.
2014: The largest Burning Man effigy (around 105 feet) was burned. Almost 66,000 Burners watched the event.
2017: A tragic incident happened after a Burner decided to throw himself into the flames. The man died the day after the tragedy.
2019: The Burning Man's participants continue to grow in number, reaching more than 79,000.
2020: Because of the pandemic, an in-person Burning Man festival didn't happen. But, fans still attended the "Burn Week" online.
2023: Almost 72,000 Burning Man participants were stranded in northwest Nevada because of heavy rain, which lasted around two to three months.