Gettysburg Battlefield, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg

March 30, 2009

I visited Gettysburg on a bright but cold Monday morning. I left Philadelphia early so I could visit both Gettysburg and Antietam; however, because I spent so much time at Gettysburg, I never did get to Antietam. I will have to save that for another day.

Gettysburg has a lot to see. You can't walk 10 feet on the battlefield tour without tripping over some sort of monument or statue or plaque or something. See the picture at the top of this page? The entire battlefield tour pretty much looks like that. And the tour isn't over a large area. Maybe about 10 square miles or so - really not that big.

Gettysburg is out of the way - you really have to want to go there. It is off US-15 south of the I-76 on the way to Frederick, Maryland. Everything, and I mean everything, in this little town is geered towards promoting the Battle of Gettysburg, which occurred July 1-3, 1863, during the United State Civil War. 1 of 2 battle sites which wasn't in what was then the Confederacy (the other being Antietam or Sharpsburg). They have a brand new visitor's center but, like all of the Parks in the eastern zone, they don't honor association cards and provide discounts if you are affiliated with an association not in their zone. I will not be visiting any Parks in the east again until that is rectified.

At the visitor's center, they have a great film (unlike a lot of the other, cheezy films at some of the other Parks I visited on this trip) and then, as part of the ticket you had to buy for this privledge (unlike other Parks, the film is NOT free - they would not even accept my National Parks Annual Pass), you visit a Cyclorama which is a nice, 3-D depiction of the battle.

After the film and the Cyclorama, you can visit the museum in the Visitor's Center. Even though I was a bit peeved about paying for this when I don't at other Parks - the point being that the Park Service should be consistent - I will admit the Visitor's Center and its offerings are first rate. One of things you could do (I didn't) was purchase tickets to visit the Eisenhower Farm. You can only get there via a Park Service bus.

I choose, as I did the last time I visited (in 1991), to do the auto tour. The auto tour is a self-guided trip around the battlefield. You get a map and then off you go. I got turned around quite a bit so it took a while for me to get on course as per the map. I did this twice; after the second I got back on course quite by accident on the visit to Culp's Hill.

The map isn't necessarily in order of events. I suspect, however, that the route makes the most sense because of the sheer volume of traffic on the route at any one time.

So off I went. Unfortunately my copy of the map route seems to have disappeared somewhere between the trip and my writing of this account. I do know what seemed like a fairly short trip, mileage-wise, took me over 4 hours to complete. Probably I was not the only one who had this experience.

What is on the route is just overwhelming. All these statues and cannon and plaques and monuments. There are monuments for each of the states that participated in the battle. Some are more impressive than others. Virginia has a very nice one, so does North Carolina. However, the most ostentatious was last on the route; Pennsylvania has the huge white structure with arches to let you walk through it, statues on the top and sides, and, if I remember correctly, the names of the participants ingraved on the structure. Given they were the host state, I think they are entitled to have a bit more than everyone else.

Back to all the "stuff". As I said at the top, you just can't go anywhere, look anywhere, without seeing something to commemorate the battle. It's all packed in this small area where the battle took place. I think I remember hearing that no more pieces can be added because the powers that be recognize they have a lot of stuff. It is hard to see any evidence of the Battle today - you wouldn't know anything had happened if it weren't for all of the "stuff".

But I did like seeing places I'd only read or heard about. Seeing plaques showing where Pickett's brigades waited in the woods prior to the Charge or driving up and walking around Little Round Top, and knowing what had happened at both this places and realizing that I was walking where people experienced this - I was just in awe.

While on Little Round Top, I walked way out to the end of the trail to see the memorial to the 20th Maine. I really like the movie, "Gettysburg" (it's prequel, "Gods and Generals", made many years afterwards, not so much). The best part of the "Gettysburg" is the resistance of the 20th Maine regiment to Hood's forces. That part of the movie is at the end of Part 1 (the movie is over 3 hours and has 2 parts), and Jeff Daniels does an amazing job as Colonel Chamberlain.

20th Maine Memorial on Little Round Top

I recommend the movie (the original and not the prequel), as well as a couple of books on the subject of Gettysburg and the Civil War:

• "Gettysburg" by Stephen Sears
• "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara (the movie was based on this book)
• "Gods and Generals" and "The Last Full Measure" by Jeff Shaara. These have the same cast of characters as in "The Killer Angels" but these are written by Michael Shaara's son. All 3 books are fictionalized to some degree but do stick to the facts about the battles.

One of many plaques about the Battlefield

Devil's Den

Little Rount Top

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