Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, and Artie Kornfeld. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project. Lang had experience as a promoter and had already organized the largest festival on the East Coast at the time, the Miami Pop Festival, where an estimated 100,000 people attended the two day event. Roberts and Rosenman placed the following advertisement in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal under the name of Challenge International, "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions."

On Wednesday, August 13th, there were already approximately 50,000 people camping near the stage. These early arrivals had walked right through the huge gaps in the fence where the gates had not yet been placed. Since there was no way to get the 50,000 people to leave the area in order to pay for tickets and there was no time to erect the numerous gates to prevent even more people from just walking in, the organizers were forced to make the event a free concert.This declaration of a free concert had two dire effects. The first of which was that the people running the event were going to lose a large amounts of money by putting on this event for no profit. The second effect was that as news spread that it was now a free concert, an estimated one million people headed to Bethel, New York. Police had to turn away many cars as the capacity of the event was getting out of hand. It is estimated that about 500,000 people actually made it to the Woodstock Festival

The Men Responsible

People camping out waiting to get into Woodstock

People flocking in order to see the performances