MIDDLEFIELD — The 1970 Powder Ridge Rock Festival, described in articles from the time as the “ill-fated rock festival,” was billed as a follow-up to the Woodstock music festival a year earlier.
Promoters estimated 50,000 people would flock to Powder Ridge ski area to see Fleetwood Mac, the Allman Brothers Band, Janis Joplin and others.
The town, however, rejected the promoters’ application for a permit a month before the August festival and residents took legal action to stop the concert.
The big name musical acts never appeared but thousands of concert-goers did.
“A visitor to the Powder Ridge grounds ... found himself asking the question ‘Can 10,000 people be wrong?’” wrote Charles Monagan for the Morning Record. “The answer to that question is a simple ‘No.’ There is a festival complete with music, tents, laughter, drugs, peace and nudity going on right now in Middlefield.”