WOODSTOCK

unincorporated village and town (township) in Ulster county, southeastern New York, U.S., lying in the foothills of the southern Catskills near the Ashokan Reservoir. Located 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Kingston, the village is a year-round resort and also a noted artists' colony, which developed after 1902 when Ralph R. Whitehead, inspired by William Morris and John Ruskin, established a handicraft community, Byrdcliffe, just north of the village. In 1906 L. Birge Harrison moved the summer school of the Art Students' League of New York there. Artists such as George Bellows were attracted to the colony, which has flourished ever since. Woodstock gave its name to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a rock festival that was held in Bethel, New York, in neighbouring Sullivan county on August 1517, 1969. (The festival had been forced to move from its planned location in Woodstock itself after protests from the local townspeople.) The Woodstock Festival occasioned the harmonious gathering of a crowd of about 400,000 young rock-music devotees and marked what is considered the high point of the American youth counterculture of the 1960s. The festival was documented in the motion picture Woodstock (1970) and the book Woodstock: The Oral History (1989). The Woodstock '94 festival was held in Saugerties about 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Woodstock village. Woodstock village has art and craft galleries, theatre productions, and frequent music concerts. Area 68 square miles (175 square km). Pop. (1990) 6,290; (1998 est.) 6,241. city, seat of Oxford county, southeastern Ontario, Canada, on the Thames River. The first settler was Zacharius Burtch, who built a log cabin (1798) on a hill overlooking the townsite. The actual founder was Rear Admiral Henry Vansittart of the Royal Navy, who in 1834 formed the nucleus of a village, which he named for Woodstock, Eng. The city hall (1853), housing the Oxford Museum, and Old St. Paul's Church (1834) are historic buildings. Dairying and livestock rearing are important activities in the area, and Woodstock's manufacturing is well diversified. Oil was discovered just east of the city. Pop. (1991) 30,075.