Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound

August 2019 will mark the 50^th anniversary of the mother of contemporary music festivals: Woodstock. Held over three days in 1969, the festival featured three-days of performances for folk and rock artists like Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.  The legacy of the festival was cemented by the Woodstock documentary and a song of the same name by folk luminary, Joni Mitchell.  That’s a lot of talk about Woodstock when the festival wasn’t actually held there.  Woodstock the event was actually held in Bethel, a neighboring town in upstate New York. Woodstock itself wasn’t even considered as a site for the festival. According to Woodstock the Oral History (1989) the only connection between the concert and the town is that the event’s promoters originally considered building a music studio in Woodstock, NY and incorporated under the name Woodstock Ventures. So what about the other Woodstock? Though it didn’t host the eponymous music festival, Woodstock, NY had been home to a thriving art colony since the early 1900s.