Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey passed away on Saturday, according to festival CEO Marian Goodell. He was 70 years old.
Goodell made the announcement through a blog post on Burning Man's website. She says that Harvey suffered a massive stroke on April 4. He passed away peacefully on April 28 in San Francisco with family members at his side.
"Burning Man culture has lost a great leader and an inspiring mind," Goodell wrote in the blog post. "The loss of his presence in our daily lives will be felt for years, but because of the spirit of who he is, we will never truly be without him."
The annual celebration of "radical self-expression" and "radical self-reliance" brings hundreds of thousands of people to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. It first started in 1986 when Harvey and his friend Jerry James built a wooden figure on a San Francisco Beach and burned it down to honor the Summer Solstice.
