Your favorite spot on Gettysburg battlefield

Like most of you, I find there are so many it’s hard to pick one. However, I find myself always walking the short distance from LRT to the Fransworth monument. It gives me chills knowing Elon made that ride across that field knowing he would be killed. Standing at the spot he fell you can almost envision his fateful ride.
 
The Rose Farm!
Why?
Because most individuals do not visit this venue.
And I am very fond of cow pies.....

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Yeppers. Mostly because the first time we went, we hit there about sundown in late July, with "Fife and Gun" playing from the Gettysburg soundtrack, and we were blessedly alone for the first time that day--no "turistas" or loud local teenagers.

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And Powers Hill, just because someday I'm going to find a link to my family--we were stonemasons in Maine who came down through PA on our journey to Ohio, then Missouri, then Texas (by 1858).
 
I wasn't able to walk the battlefield when I visited, but the place I really wanted to spend some time was the location of the Louisiana and Mississippi State monuments on West Confederate Avenue. There's something about those two monuments that really stand out for me.

Mississippi:
"The monument stands at the approximate location from which General William Barksdale’s Mississippi Brigade launched its July 2nd, 1863, charge against the Peach Orchard, which resulted in hand-to-hand fighting much like that suggested by the monument. Barksdale’s men played an essential role in the Confederacy’s successful attempts to break the Federal line on the second day of the battle."

Louisiana:
"The Spirit of the Confederacy” is also known as Saint Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen. Barbara holds a flaming cannon ball in her right hand, which is raised above her head, and she sounds a trumpet held in her left. Her cannon ball aflame symbolizes not only the physical power and destructiveness of Louisiana’s artillery, but also the lit flame with which the memory of the state’s soldiers will forever burn."

https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2012/07/19/the-louisiana-and-mississippi-state-monuments/
 
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Nothing to contribute - haven't been to Gettysburg yet - but reading this with interest to get ideas of what I must see. :smile:

Love the photos of you and your daughter, @Dom71 !

Least interesting? Probably the most visited place in the battlefield, the importance of which was fabricated in the brain of someone who was not even there...
Sorry for the dumb question: Are you talking about LRT and Chamberlain as written by Shaara?
 
My favorite spot that I must go to is the Cemetery where I smoke a good cigar on the bench and then pass where Lincoln gave his speech and then on to Cemetery hill "If Practicable". The no mans land between the "Jenny Wade house" and Middle street.
 
Louisiana said:
"The Spirit of the Confederacy” is also known as Saint Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen. Barbara holds a flaming cannon ball in her right hand, which is raised above her head, and she sounds a trumpet held in her left. Her cannon ball aflame symbolizes not only the physical power and destructiveness of Louisiana’s artillery, but also the lit flame with which the memory of the state’s soldiers will forever burn."

https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2012/07/19/the-louisiana-and-mississippi-state-monuments/

That's cool, I never knew there was a patron saint of artillerymen!
 
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My favorite location is at the marker showing where the 13th Vermont began to line up as they swung into position to attack Pickett's right flank on July 3.

My great-grandfather was in the 16th Vermont, which fell in at the far end of the 13th Vermont's line.

There's fencing in that area now. I don't know whether the fencing is in the precise position where it would have been on July 3, 1863, or even whether there was any fencing there at all. (Actually, I suspect that what fencing there might have been was removed by one side or the other for firewood.)

So I can't point in any specific direction with certain knowledge that I would be pointing straight down the line that the two regiments would have formed. Even if I could do that, I still wouldn't know exactly how far down the line my great-grandfather would have been positioned.

But I know that if I point straight out from that 13th Vermont marker and then move my arm to the right and the left, somewhere in that span I'll be pointing directly at the spot where my great-grandfather was.
This is why @hoosier likes it there so much:

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... Like it there a lot. But on a personal note nothing beats the angle at sunset for me. I just lean against one of those 3" ordnance rifles and scan the field in front of me and try to see it in the minds eye.
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Amen! (Of course one requirement is finding it on a day like this and not all crawling with tourists.)

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… Least interesting? Probably the most visited place in the battlefield, the importance of which was fabricated in the brain of someone who was not even there...
SURELY you couldn't mean...
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(Rightly or wrongly, I still like both the place and the monument.)
 
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