Woodstock, August 15, 1969: The Numbers Behind the Legend

Legends grow in the telling, so it helps to go back to the numbers. The National Park Service, which maintains the record of the site, gives a plain account of what Woodstock was.

• Woodstock took place August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near Bethel in Sullivan County, New York ^[1].
• The site covered nearly 300 acres, and approximately 450,000 people attended ^[1].
• Thirty-two individual performers and bands played; a day ticket cost $6.00 ^[1].
• The site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 28, 2017 ^[1].

The place

The festival ran from August 15 to 18, 1969, in Bethel, Sullivan County, New York, on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm. The site covered nearly 300 acres of rolling farmland ^[1]. A dairy farm is an unlikely setting for a landmark of music history, which is part of its charm.

The crowd and the bill

The Park Service reports approximately 450,000 people at the festival. Thirty-two individual performers, folk singers, blues and rock bands, took the stage ^[1]. A day ticket cost $6.00 ^[1]. Richie Havens opened, and the bill included Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead, Country Joe McDonald, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, The Who and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Jimi Hendrix was the final performer ^[1].

A listed historic place

Woodstock is no longer only a memory. The site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, reference number 100000684, on February 28, 2017 ^[1]. A field that hosted a weekend of music was recognised as a place that mattered to American cultural history.

A town, a sign and a blanket

NPR’s report describes how the festival looked to the people around it. Bethel, a tiny town, became a teeming city of more than 400,000 people, and today the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Museum sits on the actual festival site ^[2]. A hand-lettered sign put up by a local farmer read “Stop Max’s hippie music festival. No 150,000 hippies here,” a reminder that many residents did not welcome the crowd; Carl Porter, 21 and home on leave, recalled the sign decades later ^[2].

The famous album cover has its own story. Bobbi and Nick Ercoline, the couple wrapped in a blanket on the cover of the 1970 soundtrack, said they went only to see what the hubbub was and expected to be home for Mass the next day; they brought beer, wine and a little marijuana but no food, no change of clothes and nothing to sit on, and picked up the blanket on the way in ^[2]. On the music side, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame library notes that Santana, barely known outside San Francisco, lit up the second afternoon, and that Sly and the Family Stone brought an integrated, funk-driven soul revue most of the audience had never seen ^[3].

What the figures can and cannot say

The attendance number is an estimate (“approximately 450,000”), and the Park Service page used here does not discuss the weather. Numbers also cannot capture the sound itself. For that, listen: our catalogue is mastered for lossless playback.

• Dates: August 15 to 18, 1969.
• Scale: 300 acres, 32 acts, about 450,000 people.
• Price: $6.00 per day.

Questions readers ask

How many people attended Woodstock?

Approximately 450,000, according to the National Park Service ^[1].

Where was Woodstock held?

On Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near Bethel, in Sullivan County, New York, not in the town of Woodstock ^[1].