Bob Dylan — Hi Lo Ha House, Woodstock, New York

Woodstock, New York, is the Catskill Mountains town where Bob Dylan retreated following his motorcycle accident in July 1966 and where he spent several of the most creative and mysterious years of his career. Dylan had been living at Hi Lo Ha, a house outside Woodstock, before the accident; after it he withdrew from public life almost entirely for nearly two years, living quietly in the town while the world speculated about his whereabouts, his health, and the state of his music. In the basement of a rented house nearby — the Big Pink, in West Saugerties — he and the Band recorded the sessions that would become the Basement Tapes, one of the most influential informal recordings in the history of rock.

Woodstock had been an artists' community since the early twentieth century, and Dylan's association with it in the late 1960s transformed it into a countercultural destination — contributing, ironically, to the choice of the name Woodstock for the 1969 festival, which actually took place near Bethel, 43 miles away. Dylan eventually fled the town when the crowds following him became overwhelming. His John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline albums, recorded in Nashville during this Woodstock period, marked his turn away from the electric rock of his mid-1960s work toward a more stripped-down country sound.

Woodstock remains a small arts community and tourist destination in the Catskills. Various properties associated with Dylan's years there — including Hi Lo Ha and the general area where he lived — are private residences. The Woodstock Museum on Tinker Street documents the town's countercultural heritage. The town draws visitors interested in both Dylan's story and the broader mythology of the late 1960s that gathered around the Woodstock name.