Wadena – Woodstock in Iowa

Wadena – Woodstock in Iowa
I heard about the Wadena Rock Festival two years after it happened. The music had ended, the people had moved on, but the legal battles between the state and the promoters raged on. Much was written at the time, in 1970 and later years, but not much has been done to preserve one of Iowa’s more colorful and notorious historical events.

Here are just a few facts about Wadena:

Iowa imitated Woodstock July 31 – August 2, 1970 at the Clarence Schmitt farm a mile and a half southwest of Wadena,
in Northeast Iowa.
The Wadena Rock Festival was first planned for Galena, Illinois until the sheriff there obtained a court injunction prohibiting the power company from selling them electricity.
Little if any promotion was done, except on Chicago radio, because the location had to be moved within days and publicizing the Iowa location would have alerted the state authorities to give them more time to act to stop the rock festival.
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The purpose of this website is to collect and preserve the stories of those who made Wadena happen, those who attended and those who were affected by it.

Were you there? Do you have a story?
To a great extent, it was the restraint shown by the state officials that made Wadena one of the few rock festivals during the 1960s and 70s where nobody was seriously hurt, nobody rioted and nobody got killed. The stories behind the Wadena Rock Festival provide a humorous study of the era, its effect on the Midwest and the aftermath.

The Stories
Everyone who was there has a story -- how they learned about it, how they got there, what they saw and experienced and what it meant to them later. For some it was a fun time. For others, it was scary. And, yet, for many it will be remembered as just a “Funny thing happened on the way to ….” kind of event.

How the concert happened in the scenic, idyllic hills of Northeast Iowa is worth remembering. We hope to post the stories of those involved or those who attended or those who just watched it happen as the stories come to the surface. It is those stories from the people who can share them that will shape the memory and the importance of the Wadena Rock Festival as a historic event in Iowa’ past.

Here’s that story that led to the establishment of this site.

Here are just a few facts about Wadena:

News media reported that 50,000 people attended the three-day event
The festival successfully went ahead even though:

State and community leaders demanded the governor call out the National Guard to stop the festival;
The State of Iowa assigned 100 highway patrolmen to the event;
The Iowa attorney general obtained a court injunction prohibiting the festival;
The State of Iowa sued the promoters, Sound Storm Enterprises and Wadena Development Corporation, for damages of more than $1 million;
Legislatures and county boards of supervisors across the state sought to devise and implement laws, ordinances and regulations that forbid or discourage such events from occurring;
The State and local officials refused to grant a permit to the festival promoters;
Neighboring farmers, fearing vandalism or worse from hippies and rock music fans, moved their entire livestock herds from the county; and
The governor went to the concert site in hopes of stopping it from happening.