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When I was younger I did some research on the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and always wanted to see where it was held. But I never made it.
Finally this fall over the Columbus Day Weekend my wife and I have set aside some time to go to the site that the Woodstock Festival was held and see the museum and the back roads the concert goers drove or walked on to get to the festival.
When I was younger I did some research on the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and always wanted to see where it was held. But I never made it.
Finally this fall over the Columbus Day Weekend my wife and I have set aside some time to go to the site that the Woodstock Festival was held and see the museum and the back roads the concert goers drove or walked on to get to the festival.
Has anyone else went and have any observations?
My ex and I visited in 1990 and camped at (the now closed) Woodstock on the Lake Campground. There was no museum then, only a state historic plaque commemorating the event. I stood there and looked around at the vast open field and then closed my eyes to envision masses of people undulating to the music, partying, sleeping, making love, protesting the war, and coming together as a community despite some adversity. It was mind blowing.
We swam in the same lake as the hippies did while we camped. We drove the roads which would have been blocked up by concert goers who gave up and just left their car. We listened to music from the era, and I lamented that I was born too late -- I was 5 in 1969.
It an outstanding place! You can go the museum or just walk around with out having to attend a show. But, if you're making only one trip there, why not get tickets to a performance. It's a fabulous concert venue. Bethel Woods Center for the Arts :: Home
It an outstanding place! You can go the museum or just walk around with out having to attend a show. But, if you're making only one trip there, why not get tickets to a performance. It's a fabulous concert venue. Bethel Woods Center for the Arts :: Home
The only downside to the museum and concert venue being there is that one can no longer stand where the stage was, and gaze out into the fields which were awash in a sea of humanity. Part of the field is undeveloped, but that doesn't give an observer an feel for the true magnitude of the crowd.
A friend saw Dave Matthews a few weeks ago and said it was a great place to catch a show.
I shopped in downtown Woodstock as a "kid" (teenager). I used to go once/year and park my car and walk and walk, shop, eat. All by myself and it was fun, but I never got to the site of the Woodstock concert. There's a museum there now?
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Ironically Woodstock was held in Bethel NY off Route 17 in Sullivan County, Woodstock the town is in Ulster County NW of Kingston. About 70 miles away.....
To get to the concert site you head for Monticello, NY in Sullivan County, then go west on 17 towards Bethel.
The Town of Woodstock, closer to the Hudson River, was first selected by the concert organizers, but the town fathers there yanked the permit last minute so it's not where the concert happend in 1969. Instead, the organizers made a last-minute deal with dairy farmer Sam Yasgur who had a pasture west of Monticello in the area called "White Lake" near Bethel, NY. The name Woodstock stuck to the concert because posters had been printed already, but word got out that the location had moved.
Nonetheless, the community of Woodstock NY had a memorial concert after 25 years and still reaps the benefit of tourists who land there thinking that's the spot for the Woodstock Festival in 1969, which isn't so.
Woodstock NY has a charm all its own, with a long history of artists there.. but go to Bethel if you want to be where the actual concert happened in 1969.
After the site lay unused for something like 30 years, an adult daughter of a TimeWarner executive who lived in Sullivan County convinced her dad to buy the key parcel and several adjacent to it. He developed it into what became the Bethel Woods arts center and museum, dedicated to telling the Woodstock concert history and being its own lively center for performing arts.
He was kind of rags-to-riches and wanted to do somethiing good for Sullivan County where he had raised his family and started from a TV shop into some big mogul in Time Warner.
For many years, the people who owned Max Yasgur's home let people camp on their grounds annually mid-August and make a good concert with return performances by RIchie Havens, Melanie and others. But that couple retired and moved Southwest, so I'm not sure what is left of their camping tradition. They were always in conflict with the town over permits. When Bethel Woods started to develop, plenty of loyalists disliked it becoming commercial, but really Bethel Woods venue allows more people to understand the Woodstock concert all year around.
Driving through that area in the summer now, you'll see lots of guys with long beards, but they're Hassidim at summer bungalows, not hippies. In autumn, look for harvest festivals and such on or near the Bethel Woods site, enjoyed by the year-round residents of Sullivan County. It's not a wealthy area, but a mixture of oldtime residents with farm and tourist-industry-worker history, plus Hassidim during summer, plus some second-home owners there on weekends and such.
When you get to the field, it's really very moving and you can absolutely imagine the times, especially if you've done your research as you say. Have fun!
Last edited by BrightRabbit; 07-05-2014 at 06:26 PM..
I wonder if anyone on this forum actually went to the concert in 1969
An ex-boyfriend who lives nearby told me they had people camping on their property. He wasn't old enough at the time to go and I didn't live there at that time. The ex described it to me as pandemonium!
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Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
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