Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival
| Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Rock, pop |
| Dates | Labor Day weekend of 1972 |
| Location(s) | Griffin, Indiana |
| Founded by | Tom Duncan and Bob Alexander |
| Attendance | est. 300,000 |
| Capacity | 55,000 |
The Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was a rock festival held on the Labor Day weekend of 1972 near Griffin, Indiana on Bull Island, a strip of land in Illinois but on the Indiana side of the Wabash River. A crowd estimated at 200,000 to 300,000 attended the concert, four times what the promoters estimated. Food and water were in short supply, and the gathering descended into relative anarchy. After the show was finished, remnants of the crowd members burned the main stage.
Several months before the Festival, promoters Tom Duncan and Bob Alexander held a very successful small festival at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana. That show included acts such as Ike and Tina Turner, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Edgar Winter. Based upon that success, Duncan and Alexander planned a bigger festival.
The Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was originally slated for Chandler, Indiana, a small town near Evansville, Indiana. However, various court battles stopped the festival from performance anywhere in Indiana. Shortly before the start of the concert, the promoters decided upon a site near Griffin in Posey County, Indiana referred to locally as "Bull Island".
Due to the changing course of the Wabash River, Bull Island is located east of the Wabash River but is part of the State of Illinois. Thus, Bull Island was out of the jurisdiction of the various Indiana courts. The White County, Illinois government in the city of Carmi was surprised that the venue had suddenly ended up in its backyard, and was unable to stop the concert.
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