Organizers had expected 50,000 attendees; instead nearly half a million arrived at Max Yasgur's 600-acre farm, overwhelming roads, food supplies, and sanitation. Richie Havens opened the festival, and over the following three rain-soaked days, acts including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Who performed. Despite the chaos, the event was remembered for its peaceful spirit, becoming shorthand for 1960s youth culture, idealism, and rebellion.
Traffic jams stretched for 20 miles along New York's rural highways as young people abandoned cars to walk the last miles on foot, turning the New York State Thruway into what one radio announcer called a parking lot. Organizers Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman had budgeted for a modest gathering and found themselves overseeing what was briefly the third-largest city in New York State, with woefully inadequate toilets, food stalls, and medical tents.
Richie Havens, asked to open because he had arrived early enough to get through the traffic, played an extended, improvised version of 'Freedom' when he ran out of prepared material. Rain turned the fields to mud, and the National Guard helicoptered in supplies, but a widely reported absence of violence, despite the density and chaos, cemented the festival's legend as proof that a generation could gather peacefully. Max Yasgur, the dairy farmer whose land hosted it all, later said he was happy simply that half a million kids could come together and have three days of fun and music with nothing but peace and love.