Max Yasgur Farm, Bethel, New York
History
Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York — near the hamlet of White Lake, in Sullivan County — was the site of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 15-18, 1969, after the festival was forced out of its originally planned location in Wallkill, N.Y. Roughly 400,000 people gathered on Yasgur's alfalfa field over three-plus days. It is not a San Francisco ballroom; it enters this chronicle through the poster canon (Arnold Skolnick's 'bird on a guitar' AOR-3.1 and David Byrd's shelved Wallkill original AOR-3.2) and through the many San Francisco acts who played it — Santana, the Grateful Dead, Creedence, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, and Jefferson Airplane.
Its Place in the Scene
A national festival site, outside the SF ballroom scene but bound to it: the bands the Fillmore and Avalon had built were central to Woodstock's Saturday and Sunday.