On August 1, 2 and 3, 1969 an estimated 100,000 people attended the Atlantic City Pop Festival at the race course. The overwhelming turn out was an unexpected and controversial state of affairs, as local government agencies and police departments strained to respond to the harbinger of the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York just a few weeks later. Roads approaching the race course were clogged with young people who spontaneously arrived to attend, forming an ad hoc "hippy hollow" in the surrounding forest areas in the vicinity.