This weekend I went camping at Gettysburg. We camped in Caledonia State Park, in the gap between South Mountain and the Blue Ridge, and spent most of Saturday and part of Sunday at the park proper.
The park is such an unusual place. You feel like you're going back in time when you're in it--the forest and field boundaries in the main battlefield are still where they were in 1863, when the battle was going on. Old wooden fences crowd the field--in the same state they were in before its start. And the monuments! You can't walk twenty feet in some places without bumping into a monument. Every regiment, every general, has its own monument, has his own monument. Marble adorns the field, with ceremonial cannon for the artillery units. Just by tracing the monuments, you can get a sense of where Pickett was, where Longstreet was, where Meade's lieutenant generals were. And the field extends for more than a mile--all the way from Little Round Top and the Devil's Den opposite Plum Run north to the town itself. Following the path of Pickett's Charge, to the High Water Mark, you can see the buildings in town! Only autos instead of carriages, asphalt on the roads instead of dirt, mar the view that has otherwise remained unchanged since Civil War times.
Gettysburg is such an odd place. In one sense it lives intensely, but only because large parts of it have died--died not the way people do, but the way languages do. The whole park, the whole town, is one giant historic district, stifled in its own pomp and circumstance, continually recreating the modes and mores of nineteenth-century life, outdated the same way Williamsburg is. It is a living museum and a tourist trap--a dead place. And yet, peculiarly, this death has given Gettysburg a life it would never have otherwise had, for the place is now a powerful national draw. It is crowded, stuffed to the gills with visitors, visitors which propel and drive Gettysburg and make it look a certain way, not just in one place, but throughout the town. The park limits the town's growth in nearly every direction, and so it remains a compact, small burgh in the traditional mode; between the tourist traps the main street survives; there is little sprawl until one has skipped town by a goodly distance, mostly to the north, south, and east, and hardly any to the west.
Ghosts haunt this place, yes, but not the ghosts of ghost tours. Rather, the ghosts of the past pervade the present here, shape its reality, for the whole place is, after all, a giant museum and a national shrine. It is stilted but for what it is it could be nothing else.
When you go to Gettysburg, make sure you see the sparkly new visitors center. Pay respects to Neutra's cyclorama before it falls apart. Follow Pickett's Charge's path. Play in the Devil's Den and on Little Round Top; hike the Big Round Top. Milk the place for all its worth. And bring a friend.
The park is such an unusual place. You feel like you're going back in time when you're in it--the forest and field boundaries in the main battlefield are still where they were in 1863, when the battle was going on. Old wooden fences crowd the field--in the same state they were in before its start. And the monuments! You can't walk twenty feet in some places without bumping into a monument. Every regiment, every general, has its own monument, has his own monument. Marble adorns the field, with ceremonial cannon for the artillery units. Just by tracing the monuments, you can get a sense of where Pickett was, where Longstreet was, where Meade's lieutenant generals were. And the field extends for more than a mile--all the way from Little Round Top and the Devil's Den opposite Plum Run north to the town itself. Following the path of Pickett's Charge, to the High Water Mark, you can see the buildings in town! Only autos instead of carriages, asphalt on the roads instead of dirt, mar the view that has otherwise remained unchanged since Civil War times.
Gettysburg is such an odd place. In one sense it lives intensely, but only because large parts of it have died--died not the way people do, but the way languages do. The whole park, the whole town, is one giant historic district, stifled in its own pomp and circumstance, continually recreating the modes and mores of nineteenth-century life, outdated the same way Williamsburg is. It is a living museum and a tourist trap--a dead place. And yet, peculiarly, this death has given Gettysburg a life it would never have otherwise had, for the place is now a powerful national draw. It is crowded, stuffed to the gills with visitors, visitors which propel and drive Gettysburg and make it look a certain way, not just in one place, but throughout the town. The park limits the town's growth in nearly every direction, and so it remains a compact, small burgh in the traditional mode; between the tourist traps the main street survives; there is little sprawl until one has skipped town by a goodly distance, mostly to the north, south, and east, and hardly any to the west.
Ghosts haunt this place, yes, but not the ghosts of ghost tours. Rather, the ghosts of the past pervade the present here, shape its reality, for the whole place is, after all, a giant museum and a national shrine. It is stilted but for what it is it could be nothing else.
When you go to Gettysburg, make sure you see the sparkly new visitors center. Pay respects to Neutra's cyclorama before it falls apart. Follow Pickett's Charge's path. Play in the Devil's Den and on Little Round Top; hike the Big Round Top. Milk the place for all its worth. And bring a friend.
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