$65 Burgers and a Dead Cow: The True Story of Bull Island’s Lost Utopia

(An Archival Report by Safe as Fuck)

In September 1972, the American counterculture tried to resurrect Woodstock.

Instead, it summoned hell on a floodplain.

Bull Island was pitched as the Midwest’s Festival of Freedom — a three-day blowout of peace, love, and music. What unfolded instead was a grotesque parody of everything it claimed to stand for: a lawless swamp of starvation, fake drugs, and open flames.

By the end, there were 200,000 people, four toilets, and one dead cow.

The Myth of the Second Woodstock

The dream began in Chandler, Indiana, where promoters promised the next great cultural gathering. When officials blocked the permit, they moved the event — literally overnight — across the state line into Illinois, onto private farmland that was half-flooded and barely accessible.

No planning, no plumbing, no police. Just ambition, acid, and AM radio.

By the time the first wave of attendees arrived, the organizers had already lost control. Tens of thousands followed rumor trails and backroads into a disaster no one had mapped.

The Land That Time Forgot

There was roughly one toilet for every 46,000 people.

Vendors ran out of food on the first day. Desperate and delirious, one group slaughtered a cow — not for consumption, just symbolism. It was left to rot in the heat, a grotesque mascot for the death of idealism.

By day two, vendors were charging $10 for a burger — about $65 today.

Those who couldn’t pay resorted to looting. Trucks were raided. Stalls were burned. The utopia ran on fumes and petty theft.

When the High Turned Toxic

If the food didn’t kill you, the drugs might. Bleach was being sold as cocaine. LSD doses were cut with strychnine. People collapsed in the mud, twitching, hallucinating, dehydrated. Medical tents were nonexistent.

The so-called “music festival” had become a survival simulation.

The Bands That Never Came

Even the music abandoned Bull Island.

Fleetwood Mac, The Doors, and Rod Stewart all decided to skip the festival entirely after word spread of the chaos. Helicopters circled above, ready to airlift out the few artists brave enough to show.

The attendees were left with the soundtrack of riots — generators buzzing, glass breaking, gas tanks exploding.

Fire, Fury, and Fallout

By Sunday night, the crowd’s patience snapped.

Gasoline tanks were set ablaze in frustration. Entire food stalls vanished in flames. Looting became constant.

By Monday morning, those who hadn’t fled discovered their cars broken into, moved, or completely missing.

By Tuesday, the remaining crowd burned down the main stage.

When the smoke cleared, the farmland looked like a post-industrial wasteland.

Buried Evidence

The landowner, faced with a sea of garbage, had no choice but to bulldoze the site and bury the trash under the soil.The festival wasn’t cleaned up — it was entombed.

Out of the three promoters, two went to jail, though not for long. The third vanished into music-industry folklore, still pitching “the next big thing.”

$10 Burgers, $65 Futures

Bull Island wasn’t a fluke — it was a prototype.

A model for every overpriced, underplanned festival that would follow.

In 1972, they charged $10 for a burger which roughly equates to $65 - $75 today.

In 2025, they call it “premium access.”

Half a century later, the playbook hasn’t changed — only the lighting rigs have.

The dream community has been replaced by wristbands and markups. The cow’s still dead. We just stopped noticing the smell.