Battlefields and Ghosts of Gettysburg
If you’re making a tour of the United States’ national parks, one you shouldn’t miss is the Gettysburg National Military Park, a park and museum that commemorates, at fifty-one thousand casualties, one of the deadliest battles of the Civil War, when the Union won over Robert E. Lee’s second and most ambitious try at invading the North. Of course, the battle also gave President Abraham Lincoln the occasion to make his most famous speech, The Gettysburg Address.
Once you’ve checked into one of the fine hotels Gettysburg has available for its visitors, start your visit to the park’s museum and visitor center. The center is a little over a year old, having its grand opening on September 26 in 2008. You’ll find galleries on both Gettysburg and the Civil War; there’s a film titled, “A New Birth of Freedom,” as well as a bookstore and, what the park calls, a “refreshment saloon.” The visitor’s center will help acquaint you with the park, and the museum itself gives you more of an understanding about the Civil War, tracing its history from beginning to end, including a number of Civil War artifacts.
If you can wait until summer to go, the Rangers have a number of interesting programs, such as battlefield walks, as well as anniversary battle walks. The park also contains the David Wills House, a one hundred forty seven-plus year old house once owned by an attorney in 1863, now most famous for the giving President Lincoln a place to stay the night before he delivered his address.
Of course, if you’ve exhausted the parks and battlefields of Gettysburg, you may wish to check out the ghosts. There are more than a few stories about ghosts, strange lights, sightings of soldiers in battlefields, visions and apparitions of the past, appearing and vanishing. So, not only does Gettysburg have battlefield walks, but they have a ghost walk, too. A tour guide will give you the history of the town’s ghosts, dressed in the clothes of the time period, going through the town that were once battlefields themselves. If you’re a ghost hunter, or a fan of ghost hunting, this is certainly one of Gettysburg’s key attractions.
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