(birds chirping)
- Well, I remember
thinking it was unusual,
but looking back after all these years,
I can't imagine we would have
done something like this.
(upbeat music)
I was in Salem, Oregon
working for Governor McCall.
(upbeat music)
- In 1970, I was in practice
of medicine in Oregon city.
(upbeat music)
- I was a student at
Portland Community College.
- I was a volunteer for
a lot of things, and 40,
or 41, something like that.
- I worked for a social service agency
for kids on the street.
(barking)
(yelling)
- In 1970, I was a young single mother
with a job for General
Electric Medical Systems.
I was struggling along to pay bills.
- [Narrator] These people,
and many, many others
participated in a unique event that year,
(rhythmic drums music)
Vortex I, a biodegradable
festival of life.
- Now, who came up with
the actual name, who knows?
(rhythmic drums music)
- [Narrator] Tens of thousands converged
at McIver State Park.
They camped out and danced to live music.
They frolicked in the mud and
braved the ice-cold river.
Traditional law enforcement
had been suspended.
- Well, it was the only
legalized pop festival
in the country.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] And for
several hot summer days,
Vortex created a sort of clothing-optional
alternate reality, underwritten
and promoted by the Republican governor.
All of this was, in
fact, an unabashed ploy
to lure young people away from the city.
- And more and more, we believed
that there was likely to be violence
in downtown Portland.
- [Man] I now hereby
command you officers first.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] But for those
who ventured into McIver Park,
Vortex became an experience unto itself.
- It just was eye-opening,
spiritually-opening.
Then within a few more days,
I might have been a dope-smoking hippie.
I don't know (laughing).
- When I looked at the documents,
sometimes I just stopped
and caught myself.
I can't believe these
people pulled this off.
(bright orchestral music)
- [Announcer] Funding for
Oregon Experience is provided by
the James F. and Marion
L. Miller Foundation,
the Ann and Bill Swindells
Charitable Trust,
the Oregon Cultural Trust,
and from viewers like you.
Thank you.
- This was our campsite right here.
(upbeat music)
- Popular culture, rock
music, the American Legion,
Richard Nixon, Tom McCall,
it had all these things,
plus sex, drugs, and rock and roll,
you know, and with a
little politics thrown in.
- [Narrator] The Vortex I festival brought
unprecedented attention to a rural area
near Estacada, Oregon.
But vortex had been created to prevent
a crisis in Portland 30 miles away.
(mellow guitar music)
(firing)
In the summer of 1970,
the Vietnam War raged on.
50,000 Americans had been killed.
Raucous protests were occurring
in cities across the US.
And with the Kent state shootings,
the deadly war seemed to be coming home.
Anti-war demonstrators had taken
to the streets of Portland as well.
(crowd chanting)
And in early May, near
Portland State University,
police had responded
with unexpected force,
sending dozens of people to the hospital.
(crowd clamoring)
- I was on a park bench right there,
and I was watching blood
spurting out of people's heads.
And I just turned around and ran.
It was really gruesome.
Great, awful confrontation.
(crowd clamoring)
- Well, what they did at Portland State,
it was well-televised and publicized,
and so everyone knew that their friends
were getting clubbed
by the Portland police.
And so there was anger.
- There were a lot of
people that thought that,
"How dare we demonstrate against
our government's wisdom?"
- As woman said, then
I have her name down.
She said, "Governor,
stand up and shoot them."
I said, "That might be-"
- And I think that that little drama
kind of set a lot of
tension in the community.
I don't think we'd ever seen
anything like that in Portland.
- [Narrator] But the tension
would only get worse.
The American Legion, a large
and conservative veterans' organization
was coming to Portland.
- And we have this potential clash
between the anti-war movement
and the American Legion.
And because they were going to have
their national convention
here, Victory in Vietnam,
Richard Nixon's scheduled to speak.
- [Narrator] A coalition
of anti-war groups,
the People's Army
Jamboree, announced plans
to stage its own parades and protests
during the convention.
- Members of the People's Army Jamboree
have already been threatened.
- Portland was going to be
ground zero for protests,
and people were coming
from all over the country.
- [Matt] The People's Army Jamboree
were committed to
nonviolence, but they also had
people in their midst that were not.
- [Narrator] Newspaper photos
showed National Guard troops
training for deployment to Portland,
while anti-war groups
strategized and planned tactics.
Lee Meier remembers one of the meetings.
- And it was kind of chaotic.
And, you know, it seemed
like it was infiltrated
with people trying to instigate violence.
So at that point, we
thought that, you know,
we had to come up with something else.
You know, something that's not anti-war
as much as pro-peace.
- [Narrator] Meier and his
friends opposed the war,
but they also feared a
bloody confrontation.
That same fear resounded
in the State Capitol.
FBI intelligence predicted
as many as 50,000
anti-war protesters would
be converging on Portland.
- The FBI advised us this was going to be
the most volatile
confrontation in the country.
We took that very serious.
(crowd clamoring)
- We decided to go down and
talk to the governor's office,
so we made an appointment
with Ed Westerdahl.
- We had a total open-door policy,
and we felt responsible
to listen to every side of an issue.
- And we just thought that they would be
interested in hearing our idea.
We didn't think it would go anywhere.
Rather shortly, within a week or two,
we got a phone call that
they were giving us McIver Park.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] From the
beginning, the Vortex festival
represented different
things to different people.
- Have you been to McIver?
It's a beautiful place.
It's big and got a lot of trees,
and rolling hills, and
the Clackamas River.
And that in itself made
the event a nice happening.
(mellow music)
- Containment, that's why
we picked McIver Park.
Our intention was to draw
people out of the city,
put them in a location where
they could be contained.
And Vortex was ideal.
(upbeat music)
You have the river down at the bottom,
the other side of the
river was forest land;
before you had to go, a long ways
before you could get out anywhere.
And there was a steep road down to McIver.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] Vortex was scheduled to begin
on Friday, August 28th, but people started
to gather at McIver a week earlier.
- Somebody told me they were
with a couple of their buddies.
They're driving into Portland.
They get pulled over by
a Portland police car
and basically are given an
escort out to McIver Park.
It was just, "Go out there,
stay as long as you want."
- That's true.
We wanted them in the park.
The state police were
instructed to not give tickets.
And if they were young
people heading for Vortex,
to let them know how to get there.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] Here in
Portland's Delta Park,
city officials shut down
a people's pop festival
and directed the people to McIver.
Hundreds of others arrived from
a failed rock festival in Wilsonville.
- Annual bullfrog music
festival has been canceled.
- [Man] What happened when
you got to Wilsonville?
- [Woman] They were really, really nice.
We got a complete escort
all the way down here.
- [Narrator] Law enforcement officers led
many stranded festival-goers
to McIver Park.
- Well, it's pretty
interesting being ferried
by a state highway patrolman
to a rock festival.
- They had like about three
or 400 people down there,
and didn't have no place to go.
And they took and escorted them down
and blocked off all the side roads
so nobody could, you know,
get in the middle of
the caravan or anything.
It was really far out.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Craig
Dickson played in a band
called Jacob's Ladder.
- When we heard about
there was upcoming festival
that'd gonna happen,
we decided to go ahead
and wound down to the park.
We actually set up and
played on our own behalf.
It was a week prior before
the festival happened.
There wasn't really any electrical outlets
except for where the
restroom was (chuckles)
and so we plugged into the restroom area,
performing every day in
front of a restaurant.
(upbeat music)
- [Woman] I remember it not being quite
as organized as it might have been.
- Organizing it was more
of an organic process.
- You know, I was very involved
in setting up a medical center.
I didn't know who was in charge.
I didn't know who we could go to
to complain or ask for stuff.
- It just happened.
People came together to solve a problem.
I mean, they were using
lumber from blown-down barns
from the Columbus Day storm in 1962,
to try to build the stage.
Suddenly, helicopter lands in McIver Park,
a couple of suits get out,
they walk over to a bunch of these hippies
trying to build a stage and
they say, "What do you need?"
Next day, perfect-grain Douglas
Fir beams are showing up
with all this heavy
equipment to build the stage.
Now, you tell me how that got out there.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] Governor Tom McCall went
on Portland television
to present the plan.
- [Tom] Three days from
now, Portland will be host
to two groups and they
couldn't be more dissimilar.
- Well, McCall's speech, to my knowledge,
it was the first gubernatorial address
to the state of Oregon
in a state of emergency,
and it's announcing a rock festival.
- [Tom] We can say to those young,
who are truly dedicated
to peaceful disagreement,
go to McIver Park, now approved
for overnight occupancy.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] News of the festival
saturated the papers and the airwaves.
(mellow music)
- It was Vortex.
It was all roads led to McIver Park.
According to the press and
the aerial photographs,
this is the longest traffic
jam in Oregon history.
I mean, a couple of the local farmers,
their fields were rented by state parks,
and they set up a shuttle system
to get in and out of the park.
People walked in, people
rode their bikes in.
People rode their motorcycles in.
- Well, we were going to listen to music,
camp out and, you know, chase women.
I mean, that's what I was doing.
And there were a lot of them out there,
and a lot of them didn't
have any clothing on.
It was great, a sort of like paradise.
(mellow music)
- I was just a Miss Goody two shoes.
(mellow music)
My friend said, "We're going for a ride
on the motorcycle in the country."
And once we got there, there were people
laying around, sunning with no clothes on
in this big, huge field.
And I started thinking, "Oh my!"
- First of all, we parked
10,000 miles away, and
walked, and it was dusty.
And that guy with the helium balloon,
he was stark naked,
tall, long scraggly hair.
And he had a helium balloon
attached to his privates,
holding them up.
- There was a woman who
was nine months pregnant,
all she had was blue jeans.
We weren't used to nudity.
We didn't see nudity anywhere.
Naked people was just amazing.
(rhythmic drum music)
- I'm quite certain that
nobody officially made
a decision whether you're
supposed to let somebody
take off their clothes or not,
but if it isn't hurting anyone,
let's not worry about it.
We have bigger things to worry about.
It wasn't going to be
a place where the cops
were going to come in uniform or mass
and enforce the laws.
- I can be held responsible for that
because I felt it was the lesser of evils.
(upbeat music)
- There was a lot of LSD, marijuana,
probably hashish, mescaline.
I was given some peyote buttons.
- I didn't know anything.
- [Narrator] At Vortex, Dr.
Cameron Bangs got a crash course
on drug use at large gatherings.
- You know, nobody had
ever written an article
on treating bad LSD trips.
When people came into our medical center,
the first few, having a bad trip from LSD,
I had no idea what you do with them.
I didn't learn that in medical school.
You give them medication,
and it didn't help at all.
And then finally, a hippie
from the family commune
came up to me and says,
"You know, Dr. Bangs,
I think there's a better
way to treat these people."
And so two minutes later,
the next one came in,
screaming and yelling or hollering.
And this guy just went and
did physical contact with him
and reassured him that "No,
you're not losing your mind.
You will be all right."
And the person calmed right down.
And then he took him off to a quiet tent
that had a fire going,
and people sitting around it,
and just left him there,
and still gave him some reassurance.
And it worked fine.
And so, I become very skilled,
became very skilled at
calming these people down.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Throughout the festival,
several famous rock bands were rumored
to be on their way to Vortex.
- But no Namacks ever played.
It was all local musicians,
some from California,
some from Washington.
(mellow music)
- There on that little stage,
there is a large barrel
of wine, with a ladle hanging on the side.
And there weren't water
bottles like there are today.
There was just this giant thing of wine.
Oh, great! (chuckles)
So, ladle down some wine and go play.
What I didn't know was about acid.
And I had no idea that even existed,
let alone that I had taken it.
So, I can remember hitting the floor,
Tom on floor, Tom's wobbled
up across the sea (laughs)
and thinking, "Okay, that's not normal."
(mellow music)
And Paula, I'd loaned in
this little Sears and Roebuck amplifier.
And he started to play and it came out
all over the universe (laughs).
And I can remember him just doing that,
and then looking around.
And I was doing the same thing on,
my goodness, it's everywhere.
(mellow music)
- Totally do not remember the music.
I don't know why,
but I don't remember the music.
I just remember the people.
Oh, and the steam tent.
There was this big, huge,
giant plastic tent, and they had fires.
They were having steam baths
and people would go in.
I think they also had a mud tent.
- You'd go in there and get
all sweaty in that hot mud.
And then you'd get out in the sun
and let the mud dry on your body.
And then you jump into the river.
And I think that was about the cleanest
I've ever felt out there
was right after a mud sauna.
- Is this your first time through?
- [Man] This is like my
first rock festival, yeah.
- [Muddy Man] No, I meant the first time
through the sauna here.
- [Man] Oh no, this is
about my third time.
- It's that much fun, huh?
- Oh, yeah.
- [Ed] The grounds are amazingly clean.
A massive kitchen installation has begun.
Everyone is fed.
There is no charge.
- Zidell was a ship dismantling company
in Portland at the time.
And they had donated some big, huge pots
for cooking mass amounts of food in.
And they even provided the steam engine
that they trucked out there
to cook these huge cauldrons of food.
I had my camera there,
and I remember this one picture I have,
this guy with a tin logging hat
and he's got his wife,
in his like, you know,
this cutoff pants and everything,
you know, and his suspenders.
He's got a quarter Bohemian
beer in his back pocket.
And I thought, "Well,
this is great," you know.
We've got all these
people coming in there.
They're having conversations,
they're in a hippy zoo, whatever.
I mean, at least it was
bringing people together.
- I remember being down
at the river one time
and one of the early crowds came.
They were up along the fence line
and they were just watching
us naked people down below.
And somebody went up and said to them,
"Hey, if you want to look at us,
you can just come down here
and take off your clothes
and get a better look."
And like about half of them did.
- Oh, I didn't have fun, I was working.
I was in and out of there.
We kept a helicopter up
on the top of the hill
because I had to be downtown also.
- The command center for
the festival was set up
in suite 2020 of the Hilton
Hotel in downtown Portland.
And I recall being there almost two weeks,
moving to Portland with some
of the governor's staff.
- [Narrator] A small group
of government officials
had sequestered themselves at the Hilton,
monitoring every detail
of the Legion convention,
the People's Army Jamboree,
the various parades and
demonstrations, and Vortex.
A contingent of National Guardsmen
waited in the hotel's
underground parking area,
armed and ready to take charge
of the streets if necessary.
Tom McCall would be up for reelection
just weeks later in November,
facing a strong opponent who
openly criticized Vortex.
- I think that he made a
basic error of judgment.
I think that the damage that
we're going to have to pay,
because the governor permitted the laws
to be broken freely at McIver Park,
is a matter of very serious concern.
- [Narrator] The Vortex experiment was,
at almost every level, a risky venture.
- [Ed] To my knowledge,
we didn't put any insurance in place.
First of all, we didn't have time.
Things were happening very quickly.
Secondly, I don't think
anybody would have insured it.
- [Matt] McCall, he rolled the dice.
When's the last time a candidate did that?
- Well, I'm ashamed to
say that at the time,
I was so involved in the music,
and what we were doing musically,
that I didn't know that there were all
these political ramifications
and its purpose.
We just thought, "Oh,
festival, all right!"
- [Narrator] Vortex, this
free-spirited festival
of love and life took place
within a shell of government oversight.
- [Ed] And we had undercover
law enforcement officials
in the park, so we would prevent people
from being hurt to the degree possible.
We had a company of National Guard.
They were camped up at the
top of the steeper Hood
and back out of the site, in
case we needed more manpower.
- [Narrator] A state police
SWAT team was stationed
in a park maintenance building.
- I didn't have any idea.
I don't think any of us knew that.
It would be counter-productive
to bring that to our
attention (laughs), I think.
- [Ed] Vortex could not
be without the support
it has and is receiving from government.
But that fact can't take anything away
from the youngsters inside,
who are proving that you
don't need the yellow pages
and high salaries to get things done.
- [Narrator] Led by a loose-knit
group called the Family,
countless numbers of
volunteers made Vortex work,
but much of the food, the music stage,
the sanitation and other amenities
came from private businesses.
- The Portland business community
financially supported Vortex
because they knew it was in their interest
to not have downtown trashed.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] No single person
seemed to be running the show,
but Ed Westerdahl, Executive Assistant
to Governor Tom McCall, was,
in fact, in charge of Vortex.
- Tom was the policy-maker.
He wasn't the day-to-day doer.
And basically, his statement was,
"Ed, do whatever you think is right."
- [Narrator] Westerdahl
oversaw the law enforcement
and National Guard units,
at Vortex and in Portland.
- I was the only one who
can authorize intervention,
but there was very little that went wrong.
- [Narrator] Richard Nixon
canceled his Portland appearance.
The American Legion convention
proceeded without incident.
And the vast number of war
protesters never materialized.
Only a few thousand showed up in Portland.
- As it turned out,
the predictions from the FBI were way off.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] But attendance at Vortex
far exceeded expectations,
attracting somewhere between
30 and 100,000 people,
some of whom otherwise may have joined
the crowds in Portland.
- Was there a statement being made,
walking around naked and
smoking dope at McIver Park,
when young men and Vietnamese are dying
by the thousands, you
know, in Southeast Asia?
And there are people today
that still see Vortex as a sellout,
because you could have
been protesting the war.
- Vortex absolutely was an
anti-war event, I believe.
I didn't feel that my going to Vortex
might being used necessarily,
the state might have thought about it,
the law enforcement, I'm sure,
thought about it that way,
but you know, a lot of us
were very angry about the war
and there were factions on both sides,
I think, that wanted
violence, you know, to happen.
They wanted those people to come in.
They wanted confrontation.
- Who knows what would have happened
if you'd put another 10,000 people
in downtown, next to the Legionnaires?
- I think we accomplished our purpose.
We, you know, we were able to
channel potential violence.
And I think that we succeeded,
and you know, there are going to be,
there are critics who
say that we sold out,
but I don't think we did.
(grandiose band music)
- [Narrator] The expected
crisis had been averted,
and the governor turned his attentions
to the upcoming election.
- He wins by a higher margin
than he did in his first term.
He's deemed as heroic, risk-taker, brave.
And then in the second term,
all those initiatives that
define Oregon from that era
get passed and signed into law:
land use planning,
the Beach Bill, the Bottle Bill.
(rhythmic drums music)
- [Narrator] Vortex I was, and still is,
the only state-sponsored
rock festival in US history.
- My only bad experience of Vortex
was when I went up on
the stage to announce
that there was a teepee
down there by the river,
that would be of help to anybody
who is experiencing
difficulties on a drug trip,
and I made this announcement
and all of a sudden,
you know, 20 or 30,000 people booed me
for bringing up this
negative idea (laughs).
- The scene that stays in
my mind more than any scene
was the river, the mass nudity,
because I was always raised, you know,
something like that would
be really horrible to see,
but it was very, very, very spiritual.
- My naivete was that, I didn't know
it wasn't like that before.
I thought this is how
it is, how it has been.
So, it was a temporary dream apparently,
it wasn't as real as a lot of us hoped.
- Well, I don't think you
could do the same thing now.
And I think there was
a trust issue involved,
and it depends on whether you trust
your public officials or
not, to do the right thing.
So, it would be very hard to do this now.
- [Narrator] When it was over,
after most festival-goers had gone home,
Tom McCall visited the Vortex I site
and the few volunteers who remained.
- So, he takes a helicopter from Salem
and lands at McIver Park.
And there's like a little fire going.
These guys were, whatever
they're doing, cleaning up,
and McCall gets these people together,
these hippies, for lack of a better term,
and around the fire, they hold hands.
And they began to chant Om.
Now, I talked to two people
that were in the circle.
It happened.
- He did take part in an Om circle
and an om circle was very important
to the young people at that time.
And I took part on the circle.
Actually, I took part in a
number of Oms, of course.
(chuckling)
- [Tom] Federal intelligence
indicated early this summer,
that upwards of 50,000 young
people would be coming.
Vortex was a conscious and
direct response to the problem
of suddenly trying to absorb
those thousands of young people
into the city of Portland, young people,
without a place to stay.
- And they'd forge the relationship
between the counterculture
movement in Portland
and the state's highest elected official
in a collaborative way to solve a problem.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] There has
never been a Vortex II.
- You sit, you hold hands,
and you go, "Om" (laughing).
- [Announcer] There's more about Vortex I
on Oregon Experience online.
To learn more,
or to order a DVD of the show,
visit opb.org.
(mellow orchestral music)
Funding for Oregon
Experience is provided by
the James F. and Marion
L. Miller Foundation,
the Ann and Bill Swindells
Charitable Trust,
the Oregon Cultural Trust,
and from viewers like you.
Thank you.
