Beset from the beginning by legal challenges and resistance from localities that didn't want it, Bull Island fell into chaos. The biggest problem: more people than anyone had ever thought would come.

Labor Day weekend in 1972 fell in the roly-poly heyday of outdoor rock music festivals. Excitement ran high in the run-up to the Bull Island festival set for Sept. 2-4.

Thousands of tickets had been sold. Some of the biggest names in rock were set to appear at the outdoor festival on a remote, 900-acre peninsula located in Illinois but on Indiana's side of the Wabash River.

The stage had been set weeks earlier with the Bosse Field Freedom Fest, a single-day event that took place on Sunday, July 2, 1972. That event drew as many as 30,000 people and featured performances by Ike and Tina Turne

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