Texas International Pop Festival

Lewisville did not welcome the festival. Local newspapers editorialized against it, the mayor consulted an attorney and found no way to stop it, and the Dallas Morning News ran an editorial headed Nausea at Lewisville. The crowd stayed largely peaceful and dry, though a 27-year-old attendee, John Allen Shope, died of heat exhaustion, according to the City of Lewisville's history timeline. Promoters led by Angus Wynne lost about $100,000, and farmers who sued, claiming their property values had dropped, did not win. The speedway site later became an industrial park.

What the plaque says

Texas International Pop Festival The Texas International Pop Festival took place near this site during Labor Day weekend, 1969. It was held two weeks after the Woodstock Music and Art Fair introduced much of mainstream America to the "hippie" culture by way of news reports of the chaos that occurred there in part due to rainy weather and lax security. The Texas festival brought as many as 150,000 hippies, bikers and music lovers to Lewisville, which at the time had a population of approximately 9,000 citizens. The Dallas International Motor Speedway, situated along Interstate Highway 35 south of town, was chosen as the location for the event. Twenty-five musical acts, representing the genres of soul, blues and rock and roll performed during the three days of the festival. Acts included Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, Grand Funk Railroad, Chicago Transit Authority, Herbie Mann and a relatively unknown United Kingdom band called Led Zeppelin. On the north side of Lewisville, a public campground situated on the shores of Lewisville Lake served the thousands of festival attendees. A small "free stage" was constructed at the campground and local bands were brought in to perform for the campers. The skinny-dipping in Lake Lewisville that resulted from the lack of shower facilities and the late-summer heat drew much attention. Many locals demanded that the festival be shut down because of the threat of violence and unsavory activity, but there were no acts of violence reported at the festival. However, area citizens were introduced to a culture that had previously been foreign to them and many who attended look back on the festival as a life-changing event. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 17 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 18 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 18 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 19 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• Bethel Cemetery — 3.7 mi
• Peters Colony — 4.3 mi
• Lewisville Prehistoric Site — 4.5 mi
• Grapevine Springs Park — 4.6 mi