Woodstock Festival

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held in August 1969 on a dairy farm near the town of Bethel in upstate New York, drew an estimated 400,000 people to a three-day festival of rock and folk music. Billed as "three days of peace and music," it became the defining gathering of the 1960s counterculture, and its name has since become shorthand for the era's ideals of communal living, nonconformity, and opposition to war.

The festival grew out of the youth culture that had flourished through the decade. Rock music had become a vehicle for political and social expression, particularly in opposition to the Vietnam War, and earlier events such as the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco and the Monterey Pop Festival had shown the appeal of large outdoor gatherings. Woodstock was organized by four young promoters, Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman, and John Roberts, who originally planned a smaller event near the town of Woodstock, some distance from the eventual site. Local opposition forced a change of venue only weeks before opening, leaving little time to prepare.

The event overwhelmed its planners. Far more people arrived than expected, and the organizers could not control access, so the fences came down and the festival was effectively declared free. Traffic jammed roads for miles, food and sanitation were strained, and heavy rain turned the field to mud. Authorities and organizers dealt with the crisis through emergency supplies, and local residents donated food. Performers included Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Santana, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix, whose closing rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" on Monday morning became one of the festival's most remembered moments, though by then much of the crowd had left. Despite the conditions, accounts generally describe the crowd as peaceful and cooperative, and only a small number of deaths were reported.

Woodstock was a financial failure at first, but income from the 1970 documentary film and its soundtrack album eventually helped offset the losses. The film shaped the public memory of the festival as a symbol of a generation. Its legacy is contested, however. Admirers see it as proof that large numbers of people could coexist peacefully, while critics note that the counterculture's idealism faded quickly, and later in 1969 the violence at the Altamont Free Concert in California was often contrasted with it. Anniversary events in later decades, including a troubled 1999 festival, never recaptured the original's aura, which remains a cultural touchstone of the 1960s.