On August 15-17, 1969, an estimated 500,000 people converged on one small town to hear three days of music. It was called Woodstock.

As we near the 38th anniversary of the legendary music festival, let's take a look at exactly how it happened.

Artie Kornfeld, Michael Lang, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman are credited with the idea of Woodstock. Roberts and Rosenman were young, independently wealthy and looking for an idea that would launch them as entrepreneurs. Kornfeld worked at Capitol records. Lang, in January of 1969, had organized a large music festival in Miami which 40,000 people had attended.

Lang hooked up with Kornfeld and hatched the idea for another music festival. But they needed money. Their lawyer knew about Roberts and Rosenman. The four met for the first time in February 1969. By March, there was a corporation named Woodstock Ventures Inc. to organize the event. Woodstock had been chosen because a lot of musicians, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, for example, were already living near Woodstock and Lang/Kornfeld wanted to build a studio there.

By April, WVI had secured a site and had begun running small ads in newspapers and magazines to build buzz. They also started booking their first bands: $12,000 for Jefferson Airplane, $12,500 for The Who, etc. At the time, this was twice the amount the bands were getting for their gigs.

Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, The Who, Janis Joplin and Crosby, Stills and Nash and other now-legendary names also played at Woodstock. Booking dozens of nascent superstars all in one place turned Woodstock into a magnet that attracted people from all over the country.

In July, just a month before the event was to occur, the town near the originally chosen site passed laws that banned the festival. WVI scrambled and found a new site -- a 600-acre farm field owned by Max Yasgur in Bethel, NY.

By early August, close to 200,000 advance tickets had been sold, and more than twice that many people would eventually arrive. All of them planned to camp for three days and listen to music. There was no way the area could handle that many people, so when they started arriving in their cars traffic backed up for miles. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road and people walked.

On the day of the event, the plan was to sell tickets to those who had not purchased advance tickets. Instead, the festival turned into a free event when the fence surrounding the venue was trampled to the ground.

With all the roads blocked, Woodstock organizers hired Army helicopters to fly in the performers as well as food. On Friday night, 5 inches of rain fell drenching festival goers. Hundreds of people cut their feet on broken bottles and pop tops. Overall, more than 5,000 medical problems were documented.

Woodstock was a perfect storm -- the perfect time in the counter-culture movement, the perfect venue, the perfect buzz. It also was a perfect fiasco in every regard except one -- the music worked, and the people who came got to hear the music. It is that success that made Woodstock a legend.