This Day in American History: Woodstock '99 Opens
- ForAmerica
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
On this day in 1999, a festival built to celebrate peace, love, and music instead became a cautionary tale about what happens when good intentions meet bad planning.
Woodstock '99 opened on July 23, 1999, at the former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, timed to mark the 30th anniversary of the original 1969 festival. Organizers John Scher and original Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang booked roughly 250,000 attendees onto a decommissioned military base that a Rolling Stone reporter later called "the least rock and roll venue imaginable" -- acres of bare concrete and airplane hangars ringed with barbed wire, with almost no natural shade.
The lineup was stacked with some of the biggest names of the era -- Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews Band, Willie Nelson, and James Brown among them -- but the on-the-ground experience unraveled fast. Temperatures on the tarmac soared past 100 degrees, water and food were scarce and overpriced, and sanitation broke down as portable toilets overflowed across the grounds. By the festival's final night, the frustration boiled over into fires, looting of vendor booths, and widespread property destruction, and reports of sexual assaults amid the chaos would later prompt serious scrutiny of the festival's security and planning.
What was meant to recapture the spirit of 1969 instead became a case study in event planning and crowd safety, still referenced today whenever a festival's logistics go badly wrong.
Also on this day:
1862 -- Lincoln appoints Gen. Henry W. Halleck as General-in-Chief of the Union Army, replacing George B. McClellan.
1885 -- Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, dies at age 63, just days after completing his memoirs.
1903 -- Ford Motor Company sells its first car, a Model A, to a Chicago dentist for $850.
1967 -- A police raid on an unlicensed Detroit bar sparks five days of rioting that would leave 43 people dead.
2015 -- NASA announces the discovery of Kepler-452b, an Earth-like exoplanet dubbed Earth's "bigger, older cousin."
Great music, a terrible venue, and a lesson in what happens when organizers chase profit over planning.
Source: HISTORY.com
Comments