In the summer of 1970, outdoor rock festivals were spreading across the United States. One was planned for the Powder Ridge Ski Area in Middlefield, Connecticut. Scheduled for July 31st through August 2nd, the Powder Ridge Rock Festival promised three days of live music to thousands of ticket holders.
Before the first act could take the stage, a court injunction shut the event down. The legal order forced organizers to cancel, and every booked musician was barred from performing on site. The concerts were dead before they started.
What happened next was extraordinary. Despite the cancellation, roughly 30,000 people showed up anyway. They arrived expecting a music festival and found something far different — a crowded ski area with no stages, no performers, and almost no support infrastructure.
Food was essentially nonexistent for the size of the crowd. Sanitation was a serious problem — plumbing and toilet facilities were wholly inadequate for tens of thousands of people. Clean water was scarce. The basic needs of the crowd went unmet all weekend.
With no music to anchor the weekend, a heavy drug scene filled the void. At least seventy drug dealers operated openly on the grounds, selling substances in plain sight throughout the event.
Barrels of so-called “electric water” were set out for public consumption. Attendees were invited to drop drugs directly into these barrels, creating unknown chemical mixtures. No one knew the strength or contents of what they were drinking, and the results were dangerous.
Dr. William Abruzzi, a volunteer physician who had also worked Woodstock the previous year, called Powder Ridge a drug “crisis.” He described Woodstock as a “pale pot scene” by comparison, and Powder Ridge as a “heavy hallucinogens scene.” He treated numerous bad LSD trips and reported that the per-capita rate of bad trips was higher there than at any festival he had ever worked.
Writer William Manchester later summed up the weekend bluntly: “Powder Ridge was an accident waiting to happen, and it happened.”
After the chaotic weekend ended, the promoters announced plans to reschedule the festival at a new location. That rescheduled event never materialized. Ticket holders from the original event never received refunds.
