Half a century ago, in an atmosphere redolent of cow manure and marijuana smoke, 500,000 young people came together on the hillside of a farm in New York State for the biggest music gathering ever.

The historic Woodstock concert, which took place August 15-18, 1969, became the watershed moment of the late 1960s counterculture generation. It offered attendees a brief respite from political assassinations, inner-city race riots, anti-war demonstrations, Chappaquiddick, Charles Manson, a raging foreign war that made no sense, a general feeling of hopelessness and visions of a bleak future—if any future existed.

Translation: It was time to party!

Location, location

The architects of Woodstock included concert promoter Michael Lang along with Artie Kornfeld and trust-fund millionaires John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, who were both willing to fund Lang’s pet project: a history-making concert of prodigious proportions that would feature the current crème de la crème of rock music and ensure a huge profit for investors.

In January 1969, the foursome named their fledgling company Woodstock Ventures, honoring Lang’s artsy adopted hometown 108 miles north of the Big Apple and his hoped-for site of the concert.

But Woodstock locals turned down the idea of a horde of rowdy, unwashed, longhaired hippies descending on their Norman Rockwell-style village. After required permits were denied, the four men set their sights on the hamlet of Wallkill, 64 miles south.

Locals were assured that the Woodstock concert would be a low-key, folky affair drawing no more than 50,000 music fans. Once given the green light, Woodstock Ventures leased the nearby 300-acre Mills Industrial Park and went to work.

Top rock acts of the day were signed at top dollar (Creedence Clearwater Revival was the first), and around-the-clock toil was begun on prepping the area.

However, Wallkill folks began to get cold feet, and a hastily organized Zoning Board of Appeals denied the necessary permits. Howls of protest from Woodstock Ventures fell on deaf ears, and the proposed concert, now only one month away, appeared to be dead in the water.

Everyone panicked, except for Lang, who assured his partners that everything would work out somehow. With a tip from a Realtor friend, Lang journeyed 33 miles west and met with an open-minded Bethel, New York, dairy farmer named Max Yasgur, who agreed to lease a sizeable portion of his sprawling property in nearby White Lake. Just as before, Lang pitched the idea that no more than 50,000 concertgoers would show up.

Groove on the music

In mid-August, a river of cars, vans and trucks flowed into White Lake until their drivers could go no further. Many abandoned their vehicles and walked or hitched rides in cars inching toward Yasgur’s sacred grounds: a bowl-shaped cow pasture that sloped to a flat space next to a crystal blue lake.

But problems were far from over for Woodstock Ventures. Rented portable ticket stands were never delivered, and the incoming human tsunami that weekend pushed over the rickety fences that had been erected around the perimeter. After a while, Woodstock was declared a free event, which meant that Roberts and Rosenman were out about $10 million in today’s money.

In between onstage entertainment, concert attendees often cavorted, skinny-dipped and made love with abandon—and not always privately—as they endured stifling heat and humidity, booming thunderstorms and howling winds, all while gamely staving off exhaustion, thirst, hunger, a shortage of portable toilets and coping with rivers of mud. Drug usage was rampant, but many concertgoers had come just to enjoy the world’s largest unchaperoned party and groove on the music.

And what music it was! Many of the 32 performing acts reflected the quintessence of late-1960s rock and included established megastars of the day like Sly and the Family Stone, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix, and such on-the-rise artists as Santana, Joe Cocker, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

The entertainment commenced on a Friday afternoon with folkie Ritchie Havens and ended the following Monday morning—rain had delayed the Sunday night performances by several hours—with the legendary Jimi Hendrix.

When it’s over

Years later, in the book “Woodstock Revisited,” musician/songwriter/producer Sandy McKnight, who was 16 when he attended the event, recalled feeling a certain sadness creep into the euphoria he felt as he sat in thrall as final artist Hendrix performed his stellar “The Star-Spangled Banner” for a sleep-deprived audience that had dwindled to about 35,000.

“We knew, as we listened, that it was over,” said McKnight. “We’d made history and ‘come together,’ but we also understood that it could never happen again. Soon there’d be Altamont and Kent State and Watergate and disco. Jimi and Janis and Jim [Morrison] would all die shortly thereafter, as if they knew it was all over too. But I also felt joy that misty morning. I knew I’d experienced something extraordinary and unique…I had shared a utopia with my brothers and sisters for a brief moment in time.”

Visitors to Yasgur’s farm that summer weekend began their inexorable march to adulthood, with many “rebels” eventually swapping their VW buses for sensible sedans, free love for marriage vows, spare change for an IRA, and a room at home for a 30-year mortgage. But for the 500,000 people on the cusp of maturity who had temporarily bonded as members of an elite club of sorts, it had meant three days that defined what many would come to mark later as the high point of their young (or perhaps entire) lives and one that to this day retains an almost sanctified aura.