This stamp issuance celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held in the small farming community of Bethel, New York, in August 1969. The town of Woodstock, NY, about 40 miles from Bethel, refused to permit the gathering. It was the most famous rock festival in history and an expression of the youth counterculture of the 1960s.

Woodstock was a defining event of a generation. It became synonymous with the youth counterculture of the 1960s, even as it marked the end of one of the most turbulent decades in modern history.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair drew approximately 500,000 people to Bethel, NY, in August 1969. The lineup featured more than 30 influential performers, including the Grateful Dead, The Who, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

On Wednesday, August 13 (two days before the festival was to begin), there were already approximately 50,000 people camping near the stage. The early arrivals had walked right through the huge gaps in the fence where the gates had yet to be placed. Since there was no way to get the 50,000 people to leave the area in order to pay for tickets and no time to erect the numerous gates needed to prevent even more people from just walking in, the organizers were forced to make the event a free concert.

The declaration of a free concert had two dire effects: The first was that the organizers were going to lose huge amounts of money with the event. The second was that as news spread the concert was now free, an estimated one million people headed to Bethel. It's estimated that about 500,000 people actually attended Woodstock. Police had to turn away thousands of cars.

No one had planned for half a million people. The highways in the area literally became parking lots as people abandoned their cars in the middle of the road and simply walked the final distance to the Woodstock Festival. Traffic was so bad that the organizers eventually had to hire helicopters to shuttle the performers from their hotels to the stage.