Vortex 2020 is on: State-sponsored music festival will return, 50 years after the first one - OregonLive

Fifty years after the first government-sponsored music festival in U.S. history, Oregon’s Vortex festival will return.

A website for Vortex2020 officially announced the return of the music festival on Tuesday. The festival will take place at the original site, Estacada’s Milo McIver State Park, on Aug. 22 and 23.

“Vortex2020 will not be a nostalgia project, but a fresh statement of our values: community, unity, kindness, historic awareness and stewardship of our precious public lands,” the website said.

According to the festival website, the event will be free, and in place of payment, attendees will be asked to volunteer with specific community organizations. Those organizations were not immediately identified. Musicians, performers and artists will have a connection with the Pacific Northwest.

About 100,000 people attended the first event, which took place as tensions between anti-war activists and government officials were running high. The first festival was spearheaded by a group of hippies who asked then-governor Tom McCall to sponsor a weeklong rock festival that they said would draw potential protesters away that many predicted would descend on Portland in protest of the upcoming American Legion national convention in the city. City officials feared violence and rioting, and at least 50,000 at the protest.

McCall agreed, to the shock of many and the dismay of some. While organizers called the event “Vortex I: A Biodegradable Festival of Life,” others called it a “publicly funded orgy.”

But the event did what the hippies said it would: protests in Portland were subdued, as most festival-goers went home to rest instead of protesting the American Legion convention in Portland.

This story will be updated.

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

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Vortex 2020 is on: State-sponsored music festival will return, 50 years after the first one - OregonLive
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