Burning Man started in 1986 in San Francisco. An artist named Larry Harvey made a wooden sculpture of a man, and decided to burn it at a nearby beach as a bonfire for Summer Solstice. It was a success, so he did it again at the beach the next year, and then again a couple years after that. Each year the sculpture was made bigger. In 1987 “the Man” was almost tall, and in 1989 it was almost tall.