Back when Vietnam, Kent State and Richard Nixon were making headlines... Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull and James Taylor ALMOST played a concert just up the road from Camp.
Here's the story of the "Music Festival that Never Happened"...
Scott Swerdlin was on his way back to Camp - just sitting in the back of the Red truck with the rest of the Division 5 Boys - revelling in the 6-4 win against Logs and Twigs' Softball Team. Crossing the Dingman's Ferry Bridge, he glimpsed several signs along the road proclaiming, "FESTIVAL CANCELLED". "What's that all about ?", he wondered. No sooner did he stop to ponder the matter when his concentration was broken by the sounds of First Call resonating through the forest. It was almost time for Lunch. The mystery would have to wait - for now.
Scott would finish the summer (and the decade) without finding out just what the mystery was, but he never stopped wondering...
Fast forward 38 years... Scott's chance re-connection to some old Campmates via internet... a history buff's chance discovery of some Campers who spent summers right in the heart of his cherished boyhood home... a flurry of e-mails... and the story of the "Music Festival that Never Happened" begins to take shape...
Let's watch it unfold as we read the recollections of Don Stieh, the history "buff" who was there...
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It was the summer of 1970. I had just finished my freshman year at Rutgers. Kent State, Earth Day, and Vietnam War protests were all fresh in my mind. The Generation Gap was in evidence everywhere - it was the Establishment against the Counterculture... and the "battle lines" were about to be drawn in our own little corner of the world - Walpack Township.
Having missed Woodstock the previous summer, my friends and I were psyched for the Harmonyville Music Festival - 6 days of Rock 'n Roll by some of the biggest names in Rock - Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, Richie Havens, Chicago ! Even as we looked forward to it, we knew the devastating effect it might have on our magnificent valley - several hundred thousand people trampling through our backyard could wreak havoc on the environment. I was torn, but still eager to party !
The site of the Festival was the Radcliff Farm, right along the River and 2 miles North of Flatbrookville, on Old Mine Road. My family's place was in Walpack, just 5 miles upriver.
Most of the community was dead set against the Festival. After Woodstock, the images of mud-soaked humanity, roads clogged for miles in all directions and mountains of trash were nightmares we didn't want. Public pressure quickly developed to head off a repeat of that "disaster".
As word of the Festival spread, the outside world discovered Walpack ! Eager Festival goers started showing up early. Townspeople began to complain about naked hippies wandering around and swimming in the river. One man even claimed to have run off a trespasser with his rifle.
Eventually, the State got involved and a Court Injuction was issued, prohibiting the Festival from being held. The rationale was that Walpack was an isolated area with minimal public services, no method of crowd control and no way to ensure the health and safety of several hundred thousand Festival-goers. Newspapers featured the picture of a Police cruiser parked on the Flatbrookville Bridge, showing that it was only a single lane road, and couldn't possibly handle the volume of traffic the Festival was sure to generate.
As part of the Injunction, the Festival promoters had to advertise its cancellation. Signs were posted on all area roads.
On the two weekends leading up to the festival, all roads into Walpack were blocked by State Police - to keep out hippies and other "undesirables". I kept a copy of our Walpack Township tax bill on me at all times to show that I actually lived in the area, in case I was ever stopped by Police.
August 4th came and went without fanfare. The much ballyhooed festival never took place. All the hullaballoo died out rather quickly after that, and life in Walpack returned to "normal". Although he Establishment had won this round, and protected us from the much feared "hippie assault" on our environment... it would be the Establishment itself that would eventually destroy the Walpack we knew and loved... in their pursuit of the Tocks Island Dam Project. It would take the environmental movement - itself, an offspring of the counterculture, to eventually defeat the Dam project... but not until after we were dispossessed of our community.
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And so, the circle closes. One boy's curiosity turns out to be an entire chapter in another man's life and their convergence, 38 years later, solves a mystery for one and leaves bittersweet memories for the other. But out of this convergence, another chapter is opened in the History of Walpack... that of Camp Pokono Ramona.
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