It is difficult to conjure the feeling of a key Civil War battle while standing next to a pancake house. But that's what visitors at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania once saw amid the landscape at Peach Orchard, where Confederate troops broke through the Union lines and made a historic run for Cemetery Ridge. They also saw a dance hall near Little Round Top, where the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment held strong against the Confederate assault, and modern utility wires dividing the field on which Pickett led his charge.
These and other intrusions have been removed, however, and more will disappear as part of a 15-year plan that the Park Service, with help from Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg, is conducting to restore the integrity of the battlefield. The goal: allow visitors to see the field through the soldier's eyes.
"We know that by restoring the integrity of the battlefield, we can dramatically improve the visitor understanding of what happened at Gettysburg, and why," says Katie Lawhon, park spokeswoman. "It allows our visitors to see the battlefield as the soldiers did."
Park advocates hail the rehabilitation project, which also will restore missing features of the key battles.
"We wanted to bring back these missing features, such as an orchard or fence line, that affected the fighting but were lost," said Lawhon, mentioning in particular the fences that Confederate troops had to disassemble or climb over during Pickett's charge. "They were an obstacle. You can walk the field today, but you will not really feel what it was like unless the fences are there.
"Some of the projects are as simple as removing non-historic trees and replacing orchards," she says. "These things are subtle, but they can make a very big difference in the visitors' understanding."
Park officials are relying on strong documentation of the original battlefield from maps and photographs, as well as the written accounts of some of the soldiers who fought there. They intend to restore, as much as possible, the historic terrain and vistas of the battlefield.
"Because Gettysburg is the world's classroom on the American Civil War," says Joy Oakes, NPCA's Mid-Atlantic regional director, "we must take all reasonable steps to help visitors understand what happened there, why it happened, and its meaning."
Long-term improvements to the battlefield include: restoration of up to 100 acres of wetlands, fencing cattle from streams to improve water quality, increasing habitat for grassland species, and partnering with local governments and conservation organizations to plant new trees as part of the Chesapeake Bay initiative. These efforts will benefit the experience of visitors as well as the battlefield's natural environment, park officials say.
The highest-profile piece of the project was the park's removal of a modern, 300-foot battlefield observation tower adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery in 2000-the epitome of visual intrusion, park officials say.
"The tower was a monstrosity," says Lawhon. "You could see it from everywhere in the battlefield. Taking it down was a big step toward restoring the integrity of the battlefield."
In 2006, the park will unveil a new $95 million visitor center in an area where no major fighting took place. That decision contrasts with the Park Service's actions in the 1960s, when, hoping to draw more visitors, it expanded the visitor center onto key battlefield terrain and paved over part of Cemetery Ridge. The Park Service says that was a mistake that is now being fixed.
"The Park Service must always make its decisions mindful of future generations," says Oakes. "Political and other pressures of the moment, however urgent, must always be weighed against the overriding imperative to protect these living classrooms for the future."
