Why This Town Destroyed America's Most Famous Farmer

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store Max Yasgur was the largest dairy farmer in Sullivan County, New York. By the late 1960s he owned 600 acres along Route 17B in Bethel, ran 650 Guernsey cows, and operated his own pasteurization and bottling plant. He’d built the operation from nothing over two decades — and lost his place in the community in a single summer. In July 1969, after the town of Wallkill threw out a planned music festival, Yasgur leased one alfalfa field to four young promoters from New York City. That field became the Woodstock festival. Nearly half a million people descended on a town of 2,400. His neighbors never forgave him. This is the story of the farm, not the concert. The dairy empire Yasgur built in the Catskills. The boycott signs that went up in Bethel. The lawsuit his neighbors filed. The petition with 322 signatures. The postmaster who turned on his family. The sale of the farm in 1971, the move to Florida, and his death at 53. And what happened to the land afterward — from decades of silence to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, and the barn fire on Route 17B in June 2024 that destroyed the last structure Max Yasgur built with his own hands. Sources: National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, Woodstock Music Festival Site, Sullivan County, NY (listed February 28, 2017, Ref. #100000684), National Park Service Sam Yasgur, Max B. Yasgur: The Woodstock Festival’s Famous Farmer (self-published, August 2009) “Max Yasgur Rented Out His Farm for Woodstock. His Neighbors Sued Him,” TIME, August 2019 Woodstock Festival Grounds Historic Site Cultural Landscape Report, Bethel Woods Center for the Arts “A Large Fire Tears Through the Main Barn at Russell Farms,” The River Reporter, June 2024 “Farmer With Soul: Max Yasgur,” Woodstock Preservation Archives (woodstockpreservation.org)