Time & Again: Remembering Vashon’s Woodstock

Published 1:30 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2025

In the early 1970s, Vashon found itself at a cultural crossroads, as an influx of young counterculture migrants reshaped the island’s identity.

Their arrival set the stage for tensions over music, cannabis and community gatherings in the years that followed. Against that backdrop, today’s outdoor concerts offer a striking contrast to the island’s earlier unease over such events.

The annual August Concerts in the Park, sponsored by the Vashon Park District and Vashon Events, have become a familiar part of Vashon’s summer celebration.

This year’s final Concert in the Park, featuring The Great Divide, was a highlight of the summer.

But in 1970, a planned Memorial Day Weekend Rock Festival sparked fears of a Woodstock-style influx — worries that hippies, cannabis and “free love” would disturb the island’s quiet, and even a conviction that an armed sheriff’s auxiliary was needed to control the supposed invasion.

“Weed Island” has been an unofficial name for Vashon for over four decades. The moniker gained currency during the 1970s when “hippies” discovered the island and began to grow “Vashon Gold,” a high-quality cannabis sold all over the West Coast.

By 1971, there were an estimated 200-700 hippies living on Vashon, out of a population of about 6,500 residents, according to Seattle Times reporter John Hinterberger’s October 1971 article “Vashon and Hippies – No Love Affair” that detailed the resentments of some islanders to their arrival.

Three loggers held down 17-year-old Tony Grant and cut his long hair. Many shops featured signs reading “No Shoes, No Shirts, No Service” and “This is Earth Day: Wash-A-Hippie.”

When word of a proposed “rock festival” surfaced among high school students and young people on the island in May 1970, less than a year after the joyous explosion of Woodstock and less than six months after the violence of the Altamont Free Concert and the death of Meredith Hunter at the hands of the Hells Angels security guards, islanders reacted.

According to Beachcomber reporter Nancy Nelson, high school students claimed they had known about the concert for weeks, but most older islanders had no clue. The “concert” was ostensibly “a private birthday party for the wife of property owner Steve Krammerer.”

Since no admission was charged, no advertising was done, and sanitary facilities [Porta-Potties] supplied, the party-giver had complied with all regulations.”

But, according to the June 6, 1970 Beachcomber article, “the acrid smell of marijuana hovered in the air and teenagers were openly drinking wine and beer.”

One arrest was made of a 21-year-old for being drunk in public.

“Monday a 24-year-old hippie type was escorted to the ferry from the site, but refused to leave the patrol car,” The Beachcomber reported. “Deputies said he was having hallucinations and was charged with public intoxication.”

The Memorial Day Vashon Rock Festival in Paradise Valley led some islanders to call for patrols by an armed “Sheriff’s Deputy Auxiliary.” Other islanders were aghast at the idea: at a hearing, more than seven hundred attendees shouted down the idea; the armed auxiliary was never formed.

Hippies came to define Vashon to the outside world. Vashon was rural, laid-back, accepting and a good place to grow cannabis. As berry farming faded away, a more lucrative agriculture quietly set down roots.

When another rock concert was proposed to raise money for the food bank, no one overreacted. Four local bands — The Doily Brothers, Clugwater, Lyon, and Fiddler — played for a good cause. The hippies gradually merged into the island community.

This past summer, the Vashon Park District’s Concerts in the Park series ended on a high note August 28 with a performance by legendary Vashon rock band The Great Divide. Loren Sinner, Bob Goering, Jerry Wilks, Lonesome Mike Nichols, Greg Hitch, Randy Webb, and Dan Tyack, seen in a 2025 photograph by Pete Welch, rocked the evening away with islanders of all ages watching, listening and dancing.

The Great Divide was formed in the early 1980s and in 1987 won the Marlboro Country Music Talent Roundup that gave them the opportunity to open for country artists Alabama, The Judds, and George Strait at the Tacoma Dome.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the band toured with groups like Asleep at the Wheel and individual artists like Charlie Daniels and blues guitarist Elvin Bishop.

The musicians of The Great Divide are a bridge back to the musicians of the “1970 Rock Festival,” and the two events are a measure of how much Vashon has absorbed the counterculture of the 1970s into the mainstream of the 2020s.

Bruce Haulman is an island historian. Terry Donnelly is an island photographer. This article is part of their ongoing “Time & Again” series, which explores island history in The Beachcomber.