Gettysburg

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Gettysburg is one of the major battlefields during the Civil War. Within a week, 7,000 American lives perished. If Gettysburg fell, the Confederate army’s plan to take over Pennsylvania could succeed and things would be different today. Rout 30 pretty much took us to Gettysburg. The brand new visitor center was a good place to start exploring the area. The center offers tour maps for the free self-guided tour and a bus tour for $28. Option 3, you can hire a tour guide from the center and drive with you in your car for $55. Interestingly, the center’s café offers food of the period during the Civil War besides the typical fast food choices. The center also has a good deal for the onsite museum , film theater and cycloramas for $10.50. The cycloramas show was amazing. If you haven’t seen one before, it is a vast circular painting of the Gettysburg battlefield with lighting effects on canvas.
We didn’t want to spend a penny. We took the self-guided auto tour of the battlefield. The tour route was clearly marked with signs and easy to follow. The Gettysburg battlefield is conserved as the Civil Wars memorials. There are 1300 monuments, memorials, and markers on the battlefield ground today. The veterans and their families contributed most of the memorials.

Iverson’s pit story
A volunteer guide told us a story about Iverson’s men. When General Iverson sent his men to check the ground for the Confederate army, General Henry Baxter’s soldiers from the Union army were well positioned behind the rock walls. 79 Iverson’s men were mowed down by the Union army, no one survived. Because they all died and fell in a pit, the area became so hunted that farms refuse to work there.

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