Narrator: It was the largest migration of young people in the history of America. From every direction, they came. From the biggest cities and from the smallest towns. All bound for San Francisco in the summer of 1967.
Ron Thelin (archival): I think a hundred thousand is a minimum estimate of what's happening. I think it can be a major historical event for this country.
Stan McDaniels (archival): We are trying to do what no one else has ever done before in this culture, and that is to find a new way for humanity.
Peter Berg (archival): Minds are up for grabs. It's up for grabs. Civilization is up for grabs. I think everybody knows it.
Narrator: Drawn by the new hippie counterculture, with its vision of changing the world through peace and love, they arrived in numbers great enough to create a crisis in San Francisco, and threaten the utopian dream itself.
Kasper: There were people who were coming, who were just coming for the drugs, who weren't coming for, say, a spiritual awakening.
Peter Coyote: Kids were coming from all over the country. They were straining the infrastructure of the city. They were straining the resources. What could there be but trouble?
Gerrans: It got ugly. And the original people that went out there for peace and love left.
Narrator: Yet thousands would be swept up by a revolutionary movement that would shape American life far beyond that turbulent summer.