Civil War History - Gettysburg ForumGettysburg! It's not just a National Park. It's a Civil War Battlefield. For some it's historic and storied past are almost an obsession! All related discussions are welcome here!
From what I have been told they are going to clear the area around the Slaughter Pen and Plum run, moving the treeline back about 300 feet to approximately where it was in 1863. The next area that they will work on is actually the western and southern edges of the Triangular Field.
To date they have restored Herbst's/Reynolds woods (thinned), The south Cav Field (Farnsworth's Charge area), the Slyder Farm (for some reason the area around the Slyder Lane has been left for later), The area between the Rose Farm and the Stony Hill (you can actually follow the Federal lines and 2nd Andrews Sharpshooters is no longer surrounded by trees), the Den/Houck's Ridge and the woods west of Sedgwick Ave in the area of the Weikert Farm (shown in your photo). They have also layed out the rows for re-planting the Peach Orchard on the Wentz side of Wheatfield Road. The new layout will be about double the size of the current orchard but will only be on the east side of Emmitsburg Road.
The one that I am waiting for with anticipation is the area to the north and east of East Cemetary Hill. It will be great to actually see the path of the CS assault instead of looking at the trees and trying to imagine open fields.
We are supposed to get rain for about the next six days but when it clears I will take some photos of the clearings and post them.
Oh yeah, there has also been some unscheduled thinning in the Copse of Trees. The big old oak in the center of the copse was a casualty of this winter's weather and came crashing down, taking out a section of the wrought iron fence surrounding the trees. It fell right near the plaque marking the charge of the 15th MA but missed the plaque completely. In the same area, the park has repaired the plaque for the 20th MA that had rusted through and fallen, so the Charge of Arthur Devereaux is properly marked again with his unit (19th MA) and the units that followed him (15th, 20th MA) into the flank of Armistead's Virginians.
Since I consider Col D one of the unsung heroes of the battle that repair was rather important to me.
All of it ... so much so that my wife and I moved here just over a year and a half ago.
TomH
(new member)
Do you have room for a boarder tomh?...lol
__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
Actually, we have had so much company since moving that we have re-named our guest room the "Surly Bed and Breakfast", a solely owned subsidiary of Surly Industries.
Drop me a line the next time you are visiting and I will arrange for one of our "Surly Unauthorized Battlefield Tours" including some of the lesser known attractions on the battlefield. The highlight of the tour is the Lincoln Towncar (CS grey of course) driven by Marse Robert while traversing the field. The legend is that before the General would use the vehicle he had the Ordnance Sgt remove the "Lincoln" nameplate and replace it with a Jeff Davis plate <grin>.
By the way: SUBT's motto is "Shut up and pay attention, and get your d**n kid off that monument!". Our tour guides were hand-picked from the surliest people in Massachusetts to ensure the highest degree of surliness available from any G'Burg tour groups.
[b]LOL...Tom I would love to take a tour in your town car. You can even leave Lincoln on it. There was a young lady that wants to be a tour guide some day was going to give me a tour but things didn't work out. I bought a driving tour CD. I hired a guide the first time I was out there and he was a bust. I knew more about the battle than he did and at the time that wasn't much....lol.. My wife and I really like it out there.
Martin (8thvacav)
__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
Tomh: So, surly would be want you want in a tour guide right? I'm not even sure what the term means, but if it helps keep kids off of monuments I'm all for it. My favorite part of the field is Little Round Top, but I was there in 1987, before I really knew what went on during those three days, and before I became hooked on the CW. When I was there on LRT, I heard a very knowledgable gentleman speaking about the events that took place there, and I said to myself, "You know, I need to pick up a book and read about this place." Then people started drifting away from me there, because I was talking to myself.... Anyway, shortly afterwards I picked up "The Killer Angels", and have been a fanatic ever since. If there's any latent interest at all in the war in you, that hallowed ground will bring it out.....Terry
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
The "Surly" moniker comes from the fact that I have been known to be somewhat cranky when I run into people playing the fool on the Battlefield or climbing the monuments. Whether or not that is something that you want in a tour really depends on your sense of humor.
I spend a lot of time on the field and I love seeing incidents like you talked about with your first trip to LRT. My favorite is watching the many school tour groups and seeing the "bright light of understanding" suddenly shining on a young face in the group. Generally most of the kids would rather be back at the hotel room with their GameBoy but there are usually a couple of kids in the group that seem to "get it". As a collector, one of my concerns is that we are an aging group and the number of new young enthusiasts doesn't make up for the number of older collectors that we lose to father time (just go to a large relic show to see what I mean, sometimes we can't hear each other over the sound of our knees popping and joints creaking). Seeing that sudden understanding in a young face always makes me feel like there are new hands to take up the banner and continue the ongoing research.
Tomh- I just received my Friends of Gettysburg newsletter and they had pictures showing the restoration. It's coming along great! I really can't wait to see it this fall. I wish that I could go down and help either build fences or paint, but I can't this year.
My first visit to Gettysburg was in 2002 (it was a college graduation present from my parents... I skipped my graduation to go there. I definitely had the better end of the deal than the rest of my classmates who attended commencement). Anyways, there were busloads of kids and it so disappointed me to see that they were more interested in counting the number of stairs on the sight-seeing towers, than they were interested in what they were supposed to be looking at. Of course, most of the kids were either real young (6 or 7) or else they were in middle grades and were more interested in impressing each other. I don't think that we have to worry too much about the interest not being there in the younger generations. I've noticed that there are a lot more young ones getting into reenacting, so that's a positive.
The changes are really impressive, especially from an interpretive point of view. Now you can stand on the edge of the Slyder Farm and see where Farnsworth's Cav charged (instead of looking at thick woods and trying to figure out how horses got through there). From the left of the 3rd Corps position it is now even more incomprehensible how Sickles moved his Corps to the Emmitsburg Road, and you can see all the way to the Rose Farm. And, most impressive to me, Houck's ridge and the Den now seem like an incredibly exposed position with line of sight not only west to the Triangular Field but southeast to BRT and east to LRT. The kids in the 124th NY and Smith's Battery must have felt like they were hanging out there for all of Longstreet's corps to shoot at.
BTW: It is great to hear that there are young people still becoming attracted to re-enacting. Send some of them to the relic shows so we don't become a dying breed <grin>.
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