Woodstock 1969: Three Days of Peace, Music, and Counterculture on Max Yasgur's Farm

If you want to understand the counterculture of the 1960s, go to Bethel. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair — billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" — was held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, sixty miles southwest of the town of Woodstock. It drew an audience of more than 460,000 people, becoming one of the largest music festivals in history and the defining event of a generation.

**Origins**

Woodstock was the brainchild of four young men: Artie Kornfeld, a record-company executive; Michael Lang, a concert promoter; and John P. Roberts and Joel Rosenman, the heirs whose financing — through their company Woodstock Ventures — bankrolled the venture. As Wikipedia records, the founders originally planned a for-profit recording-studio retreat in the town of Woodstock; what they built instead was a free, sprawling, mud-soaked festival that became a turning point in popular music history. After the original Wallkill, New York site fell through, dairy farmer Max Yasgur agreed to rent his hayfields, and the festival moved to Bethel in the final weeks.

**The Festival**

The crowds overwhelmed every plan. Fences were cut and the festival became free; food ran short; rain turned the pastures to mud; and the New York State Thruway backed up for miles. Yet against every prediction of disaster, Woodstock remained remarkably peaceful — a fact that gave the festival its enduring mythology. Thirty-two acts performed across the long weekend, among them Richie Havens, who opened the festival, Santana, Janis Joplin, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills & Nash (in their second-ever performance), and Jimi Hendrix, who closed the festival on Monday morning with his searing, improvised rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

**Why It Matters**

As Rolling Stone later wrote, Woodstock was one of the fifty moments that changed the history of rock and roll. It captured the apex of the youth counterculture — its idealism, its music, and its conviction that a generation could gather, half a million strong, and build, however briefly, a working community. In 2017, the festival site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and today the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts stands on the original field, with a museum that preserves the story. Woodstock did not invent the counterculture, but it gave it its image: a muddy field, a wooden stage, and a generation that, for three days, believed peace and music were enough.

**References**

- Wikipedia: Woodstock — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock

- Bethel Woods Center for the Arts — https://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/