Where 420 comes from
Five kids, one wall, 4:20 sharp.
In the fall of 1971, a group of San Rafael High students who called themselves the Waldos met at 4:20 in the afternoon by a campus wall to hunt for an abandoned cannabis crop. The crop never turned up. The code word did.
“4:20” spread from their circle into the orbit of the Grateful Dead, then into the pages of High Times, and from there into a language the whole world came to share. A private in-joke became a public holiday — a date, a time, and a nod that needs no explaining.
Half a century on, April 20 is part celebration, part protest, part homecoming. This is the short version. The long one has the wall, the map, the flyer, and the rest.
Read the full origin story →