Loma Prieta Periodic Comet Machholz 1 96P/Machholz on May 12, 1986. The first official West Coast Messier marathon was conducted from this site in March 1979. The epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was near the mountain. The mountain was the longtime site for the transmitter tower of San Jose television station KNTV (from 1955 to 2005). It moved its transmitter northwest to San Bruno Mountain in September 2005, after it became the Bay Area's NBC affiliate. Loma Prieta is the tallest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains and it is common to see snow on the mountain during the winter.
Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge major cantilever span. Little was done to address this problem until the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and while the epicenter was distant from the bridge, a 50-foot (15 m) section of the upper deck of the eastern truss viaduct portion of the bridge collapsed onto the deck below, indirectly causing one death at the point of collapse. The bridge was closed for a month as construction crews removed and reconstructed the fallen section. It reopened on November 18, 1989, with a new stronger retrofit in place. The failure was at the