History

2019

August 2019

U.S. Census Bureau History: Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Richie Havens was the opening musical act at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on August 15, 1969.
Concert organizers urged Havens to perform multiple encores as thousands of ticketed and unticketed
concertgoers jammed the roads around Bethel, NY, delaying bands trying to reach the venue.

Photo of Richie Havens performing in Hamburg, Germany, courtesy of Henrich Klaffs.

Between August 15–18, more than 400,000 people descended on Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, NY, for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair . The festival featured some of the most iconic rock and folk music performers of the era, including Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix. Although many music festivals followed Woodstock, none can compare to the cultural and historical significance of Woodstock's 3 days of peace, love, and music.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair began to take shape in early 1969 when music industry executives and financiers envisioned a folk and rock music concert near Wallkill, NY, that could be attended by 25,000. The difficulty of securing a venue in Wallkill and surrounding areas eventually led concert organizers to Max Yasgur's dairy farm. The delay in finding a venue and negotiating for the use of Yasgur's fields meant organizers had only a few weeks to prepare the stage, sound, and lights; fencing; ticket booths; bathrooms; and concession stands before attendees began arriving at the site. Days before the first performances, more than 50,000—many without tickets—set up camps in the nearby fields. By August 15, hundreds of thousands of concertgoers overwhelmed the venue's gates and jammed the roads leading to Bethel, NY. Event staff were helpless to stop unticketed attendees from walking through the venue's porous fencing. There was little event staff could do, so Woodstock became a free concert for all who could get to Yasgur's dairy farm.

With the deluge of concert goes still steaming toward Bethel and clogging highways and local roads, Richie Havens opened the festival with performances of his own songs, two Beatles covers, and finally an improvised song he called, "Freedom." This gave concert organizers time to rearrange the musical lineup and find replacements for performers stuck in traffic. Despite heavy rain, musicians Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, and others performed late into the night of the festival's first day. A second day of music began with rock band Quill and ended nearly 22 hours later with performances by The Who and Jefferson Airplane. Woodstock's third day began with a performance by Joe Cocker. Following another day of rain and musical performances that played through the night, Jimi Hendrix ended the festival on August 18.

At the time, musicians and attendees knew that Woodstock was special. The size of the crowd, musicians, weather, traffic, and more made Woodstock a social and cultural milestone for a generation of Americans who grew up in the 1960s. For 4 days in August 1969, nearly half a million young men and women forgot about the war in Vietnam, political squabbling, assassinations, and other events that made the late 1960s such tumultuous years for the United States. In a statement made after the crowds departed, venue owner Max Yasgur said that Woodstock proved to the world that "half a million people can get together and have three days of fun and music, and have nothing but fun and music."

You can learn more about the Woodstock Music and Art Fair using census data and records. For example:

• The town of Bethel, in Sullivan County, NY, hosted the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Sullivan County was founded in 1809 after splitting from Ulster County. One year after Sullivan County's founding, the 1810 Census counted its population at 6,108 inhabitants. Today the county is home to 75,498 and the county seat of Monticello has a population of 6,439.
• The release of the 1950 Census by the National Archives and Records Administration after April 1, 2022, will be the first time census records for many of Woodstock's performers become publicly available. Musicians who should debut in the 1950 Census include Jimi Hendrix (born in Seattle, WA, in 1942); Janis Joplin (Port Arthur, TX, 1943); and Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia (San Francisco, CA, 1942).
• In 1969, most Woodstock concertgoers listened to popular music on the radio and vinyl records. In that year, the United States was home to 4,254 "Standard Broadcast" (AM) radio stations and 4,377 commercial and noncommercial Frequency Modulation (FM) stations. In 2016, the nation was home to 4,554 radio stations (NAICS 515112) employing 80,609.
• The Woodstock Music and Art Fair attracted more than 400,000 visitors to Bethel, NY. From August 15–18, 1969, Bethel's population rivaled the 1970 populations of Atlanta, GA (496,973); Cincinnati, OH (452,524); and San Jose, CA (445,779). Today, Atlanta's population is 498,044. Cincinnati's population is 302,605. San Jose has grown to become one of the nation's largest cities with a population of 1,030,119.
• Woodstock—a documentary film released the year after the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair—won the Academy Award for best documentary feature and earned nominations for film editing and sound. In 1970, Americans spent $50 million to see Woodstock in movie theaters and a total of $1.16 billion on all motion pictures admissions. In 1996, the National Film Preservation Board selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry because of its "innovative use of split frame visuals and a sound track that integrated and overlapped recordings from several sources at once" at the culturally and historically significant 1969 music festival.
• A concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in Saugerties, NY, August 12–14, 1994. Like the 1969 concert, organizers were unable to prevent "gate crashers" from attending the event without a ticket, and more than 380,000 of the 550,000 people in attendance did not pay admission. To date, the 1994 concert was the largest of the commemorative Woodstock concerts, which included a 20th anniversary concert in New York City and a 30th anniversary festival in Rome, NY. A 3-day festival celebrating Woodstock's 50th anniversary and featuring some of the 1969 festival's performers is planned for August 16–18, 2019.
• In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 64,811 people 16 years and over worked as a musician, singer, or related worker. Musicians and singers interested in recording their music may visit one of the 1.703 sound recording studios (NAICS 512240) found in the United States in 2016. California led the nation with 456 sound recording establishments, followed by New York with 253, Florida with 114, and Texas with 88. Master recordings could be published at one of the nation's 353 record production (NAICS 512210) establishments.
• Are you interested in using census data and records to learn more about music, motion pictures, and other media? Visit our archives of monthly homepages containing information about the Academy Awards, Rock 'n Roll music, the newspaper and book publishing industries, Walt Disney, and public television.

This Month in Census History

On August 2, 1790, 650 U.S. marshals and their assistants began conducting the 1790 Census. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson reported that the nation's population was 3,929,214.

The nation's population was 62,979,766 in 1890, and grew to 248,709,873 in 1990.

On July 1, 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the U.S. population was 327,167,434.

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Bethel, NY

In August 1969, more than 400,000 people converged on the Sullivan County, NY, town of Bethel, near Max Yasgur's dairy farm, for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Eleven years after its 1809 founding, Bethel's population was 1,096. When Walker & Jewett published this map of Sullivan County, NY, in 1875, Bethel's population was between 2,735 in 1870 and 2,532 in 1880. One year after "Woodstock," the 1970 Census counted 2,763 in the town.

Today, Bethel is home to Bethel Woods , a performing arts venue and museum that is dedicated to the 1969 music festival and a population of 4,255.

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Woodstock Monument

In 1984, Wayne Saward erected a monument overlooking Max Yasgur's dairy farm to commemorate the 1969 music festival.

The National Park Service listed the Bethel, NY, site in the National Register of Historic Places on February 28, 2017, for its significance as the "definitive expression of the musical, cultural, and political idealism of the 1960s."

Many of Woodstock's attendees came from the "Baby Boom" generation. Today, this generation's ages range from 55 to 74. In 2017, the American Community Survey estimated that the population of living Baby Boomers was 68,250,909.