Woodstock, 1969, huge crowds

On this day in 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival opens on a patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New York town of Bethel.

The young promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang originally envisioned the festival as a way to raise funds to build a recording studio and rock-and-roll retreat near the town of Woodstock, New York.

Despite their relative inexperience, the promoters managed to sign a roster of top acts, including the Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many more.

by the time the gates opened, more than 400,000 people were clamoring to get in. Those without tickets simply walked through gaps in the fences.

“No lesson is so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts.” Lord Salisbury

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