Woodstock has been called the defining event of a generation, a three-day festival in August 1969 that showcased some of the most iconic musical acts of the day. But more than that, it was a celebration of the counterculture that was going strong at the time. Festivalgoers indulged in LSD, slept in the mud, and spent three days celebrating rock and roll culture. Yet Woodstock was famously chaotic, causing turmoil in the news and local community. Let’s look back on the frenzied aftermath of the festival of a lifetime.
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Set Up for Disaster
Everything about the festival was chaotic from the start. For one thing, so many attendees were rushing the gates that festival organizers had to open the doors and decline to charge further admission. Electrical wires were set up in the mud at the stages, and food was scarce or dosed with LSD.
With nearly half a million attendees, everything about Woodstock was overwhelming—even before the festival began. Rain continued intermittently throughout the event, causing sound issues, delaying sets, and leaving everyone filthy. There were only 600 portable toilets, which could not handle the crowds and began to overflow.
“It was a quagmire,” Nancy Eisenstein, an attendee at Woodstock ‘69, told History.com. “It sucked your shoes off. It was not only mud but cow manure, and it was so dark it looked like chocolate syrup. So we tried not to walk a lot.”
Under these conditions, one might think Woodstock would be doomed. But despite the chaos, the festival was surprisingly positive and peaceful. Despite frantic media reports and discussions of whether to send in the National Guard to control the crowd, the hundreds of thousands of attendees left without issue—but not without leaving their muddy mark.
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“Woodstock startled and baffled the news media,” Jon Pareles wrote for The New York Times. “Contemporary reports relied on official sources—police, medical personnel, local government—and painted a disaster of traffic jams, food shortages, and drug freakouts.”
After Jimi Hendrix wrapped up his final set at about 11 a.m. on August 18, festival attendees began to leave the venue in the hundreds of thousands. Many had left their cars abandoned nearby when the traffic jams proved impassable. They now swarmed back through the area, churning the festival grounds into a sea of mud and blocking the roads throughout Bethel, New York.
The Aftermath
As the Woodstock attendees swarmed out of the area, they left a sea of mud and filth behind them. Farmland was trampled, and roads were overwhelmed until, at last, the 400,000-plus people were finally gone.
Woodstock became an event that would remain foremost in attendees’ minds for the rest of their lives. For the residents of Bethel, the memories were less pleasant. The town had greeted festival attendees with food and water stations but quickly found themselves overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. Three days later, their attitudes had markedly changed.
By May of 1970, Bethel had enacted a law that prohibited gatherings of more than 10,000, determined that there would not be a repeat of Woodstock. Local health and sanitation regulations tightened, further reducing the likelihood of another music festival there in the future. Meanwhile, the local residents were in uproar, while the town’s politicians blamed one another for letting Woodstock get out of control.
Max Yasgur, the owner of the farm on which Woodstock was held, had a kinder opinion about the festival goers. But even he said he didn’t plan to repeat the experience.
“As far as I know, I’m going back to running a dairy farm,” Yasgur told The New York Times.
Yasgur’s farm was filthy when the crowds dispersed. But in a surprising turn of events, 8,000 people stayed behind to clean up. Their efforts were so thorough that modern scientists who have excavated the property haven’t found much.
In the following years, residents did everything they could to ensure that Bethel would never host another music festival. Local farmers spread chicken manure over their land so visitors could not walk there. On one anniversary of the festival, locals even set up a roadblock with police cars to keep any surprise visitors from showing up.
Town Supervisor Daniel Amatucci, who had played a role in planning the festival and issuing the necessary permits, did not win his reelection campaign in November 1969. The defeat was at least in part because of Woodstock.
Bethel Today
It took nearly 30 years for the town of Bethel to embrace its legacy as the site of one of the most revolutionary events in history. But the concert has never been replicated. The disastrous Woodstock ‘99 took place in Rome, New York, while a 50th anniversary celebration in 2019 was canceled at the last minute.
Landowner Max Yasgur died in 1973 after selling his farm. It is still a tourist destination today, though it’s much quieter and less muddy than it was during that infamous August in 1969.
Photo by Howard Arnold Collection/Getty Images
