Image: Opening ceremony at Woodstock. Swami Satchidananda giving the opening speech. (Public Domain)

On this date in history, January 7, 1970, a farmer in Bethel, New York, sued fellow farmer Max Yasgur, who rented out his farm for the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, for $35,000 for damage to their properties caused by the 500,000 hippies who attended the festival.

Woodstock’s organizers were having great difficulties finding a location in Wallkill, N.Y., about 30 miles from the town of Woodstock, to hold their music festival. Place after place was turning them down. Eventually, their search led them to nearby Bethel, where a local real estate agent put them in touch with a local dairy farmer named Max Yasgur.

Yasgur and the organizers agreed to lease a 600-acre field for $75,000. Yasgur was a pro-Vietnam political conservative who supported free speech and expression, even if it differed from his own. Yasgur once told the New York Times, “If the generation gap is to be closed, we older people have to do more than we have done.” Yasgur addressed the town council and told them that despite agreeing with them that the hippie lifestyle, which included heavy drug use and anti-war slogans, was not ideal, he stated that “Tens of thousands of Americans in uniform gave their lives in war after war just so these kids would have the freedom to do exactly what they are doing. That’s what this country is all about, and I am not going to let you throw them out of our town just because you don’t like their dress or their hair or the way they live or what they believe. This is America, and they are going to have their festival.”

So on Aust 15, 1969, the festival billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music kicked off.

Yasgur’s decision to lease land for a gathering of long-haired hippies was not popular in Bethel. He was given the cold shoulder, threatened with arson, had his dairy products boycotted, and threatened with physical harm. This only worked to steel the farmers’ resolve.

During the festival, Yasgur, who by that time had become a folk hero to those assembled, told the audience, “You’ve proven to the world that a half a million kids – and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you – a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and God bless you for it!”

Yasgur’s neighbors turned against him soon after the festival. One neighbor would sue him on January 7, 1970, for $35,000, stating that concertgoers “used their property as a site of shelter and defecation and left their property strewn with refuse.” Yasgur suffered severe property damage and a loss of resources when the farmer gave away water, milk, and milk products after some people in Bethel had started charging concertgoers for water.

Yasgur always maintained that he never regretted letting the festival happen, and he later received $50,000 from the concert organizers to help mitigate the damage to his property. The farmer refused any further attempts for a Woodstock revival, and he finally sold the farm in 1971 and moved to Florida. In 1973 Max Yasgur died of a heart attack and was buried in New York State. Rolling Stone magazine paid tribute to Yasgur with a full-page obituary – something quite remarkable for a non-musician.

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