Discover 15 hidden attractions, cool sights, and unusual things to do in Gettysburg (United States). Don't miss out on these must-see attractions: Pennsylvania State Memorial, 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Monument, and Devil's Den. Also, be sure to include Gettysburg National Cemetery in your itinerary.
Below, you can find the list of the most amazing places you should visit in Gettysburg (Pennsylvania).
Table of Contents
Pennsylvania State Memorial
Monument in the Adams County, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania State Memorial is a monument in Gettysburg National Military Park that commemorates the 34,530 Pennsylvania soldiers who fought in the July 1 to 3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. The memorial stands along Cemetery Ridge, the Union battle line on July 2, 1863. Completed in 1914, it is the largest of the state monuments on the Gettysburg Battlefield.[1]
Address: Hancock Ave, 17325 Gettysburg
72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Monument
Monument in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Monument is an 1891 statuary memorial on the Gettysburg Battlefield. It is located on Cemetery Ridge, by The Angle and the copse of trees, where Union forces – including the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry – beat back Confederate forces engaged in Pickett's Charge.
The monument was the subject of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case over control of the battlefield. It is depicted on the 2011 "Gettysburg" America the Beautiful quarter commemorative coin.
The regiment erected an earlier monument in 1883. To avoid confusion, that is now usually referred to as the "Philadelphia Brigade" Monument.[2]
Devil's Den
Devil's Den is a boulder-strewn hill on the south end of Houck's Ridge at Gettysburg Battlefield, once used by artillery and infantry on the second day of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. A tourist attraction since the memorial association era, several boulders are worn from foot traffic and the site includes numerous cannon, memorials, and walkways, including a bridge spanning two boulders.[3]
Address: Crawford Ave, 17325 Gettysburg
Gettysburg National Cemetery
Cemetery. Gettysburg National Cemetery is a United States national cemetery created for Union/Federal casualties of the July 1 to 3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. It is located just outside Gettysburg Borough to the south, in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The land was part of the Gettysburg Battlefield, and the cemetery is within Gettysburg National Military Park administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior.
Originally called Soldiers' National Cemetery, U.S. 16th President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865, served 1861–1865), delivered his Gettysburg Address at the cemetery's consecration, November 19, 1863. That day is observed annually at the cemetery and in the town as "Remembrance Day" with a parade/procession and memorial ceremonies by thousands of Civil War reenactor troops, both Union Army/United States Army and Confederate States Army and descendants heritage organizations led by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).
The cemetery contains 3,512 interments from the Civil War, including the graves of 979 unknowns. It also has sections for veterans of the Spanish–American War (1898), World War I (1917–1918), and other wars, along with graves of the veterans' spouses and children. The total number of interments exceeds 6,000.
Battlefield monuments, memorials, and markers are scattered throughout the cemetery, and its stone walls, iron fences and gates, burial and section markers, and brick sidewalk are listed as contributing structures within Gettysburg Battlefield Historic District.[4]
Address: 97 Taneytown Road, 17325-2804 Gettysburg
Little Round Top
Landmark hill with commemorative markers. Little Round Top is the smaller of two rocky hills south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—the companion to the adjacent, taller hill named Big Round Top. It was the site of an unsuccessful assault by Confederate troops against the Union left flank on July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, during the American Civil War.
Little Round Top was successfully defended by a brigade under Colonel Strong Vincent, who was mortally wounded during the fighting and died five days later. The 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, fought its most famous engagement there, culminating in a dramatic downhill bayonet charge. The battle at Little Round Top subsequently became one of the most well-known actions at Gettysburg, and of the entire war.[5]
Address: Sykes Ave, 17325 Gettysburg
Alabama State Monument
The Alabama State Monument, also known as the Alabama State Memorial, is an Alabama memorial in Gettysburg National Military Park that commemorates the state's Confederate units that took part in the Battle of Gettysburg. It is located in an area that was occupied by Evander M. Law's Alabama Brigade prior to their attack on the Round Tops on July 2, 1863. It was dedicated by the Alabama Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy on November 12, 1933.
The memorial was created by Joseph Urner. It features a large granite base topped by a granite monolith, fronted by a bronze figure group. The granite is from Gettysburg and Vermont, with the bronze cast at the Hammaker Brothers Foundry. The bronze group composition features a female figure representing the Spirit of the Confederacy, flanked by a wounded soldier on her right and an armed soldier on her left. Her left arm gestures the armed soldier to continue fighting and her right lightly restrains the wounded figure from further combat. The top of the granite monolith is inscribed with the word "Alabamians!" and the base with "Your Names Are Inscribed On Fames Immortal Scroll."[6]
Evergreen Cemetery
Cemetery. Evergreen Cemetery – formerly called Citizen's Cemetery and Ever Green Cemetery – is a historic 29.12 acre rural cemetery located just outside Gettysburg Borough, in Cumberland Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania. It is part of Gettysburg Battlefield Historic District, and is surrounded by Gettysburg National Military Park and Soldiers' National Cemetery.
The cemetery played a strategic role in the July 1 to 3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. Four months after the battle, at the dedication of the immediately-adjacent National Cemetery, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his "Gettysburg Address" from a platform in Evergreen Cemetery.[7]
Address: 799 Baltimore St, 17325-2611 Gettysburg
Eternal Light Peace Memorial
Monument in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The Eternal Light Peace Memorial is a 1938 Gettysburg Battlefield monument dedicated on July 3, 1938, commemorating the 1913 Gettysburg reunion for the 50th anniversary of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1913. The natural gas flame in a one-ton bronze urn is atop a tower on a stone pedestrian terrace with views from the terraced hill summit over about 400 sq mi, and the flame is visible from 20 mi away.[8]
Address: Confederate Ave, 17325 Gettysburg
North Carolina Monument
Artwork. The North Carolina Monument is a North Carolina memorial of the American Civil War commemorating the 32 Carolina regiments in action at the Battle of Gettysburg. The monument is a public artwork by American sculptor Gutzon Borglum located on Seminary Ridge, West Confederate Avenue, in the Gettysburg National Military Park.[9]
Address: 195 Baltimore Pike, 17325 Gettysburg
Cemetery Hill
Battle. Cemetery Hill is a landform on the Gettysburg Battlefield that was the scene of fighting each day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The northernmost part of the Army of the Potomac defensive "fish-hook" line, the hill is gently sloped and provided a site for American Civil War artillery.[10]
Gettysburg Rostrum
Historical landmark in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The Gettysburg Rostrum is a Gettysburg Battlefield venue for historical commemorations which have included addresses by US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The facility has been most often used during Decoration Day and Dedication Day ceremonies, but has been used for other events such as the Pennsylvania Days commemoration during Camp Samuel Harper in September 1889. Identified in 1908 as the location of the Gettysburg Address, the Rostrum and Soldiers' National Monument are each rejected by the NPS's modern Cemetery Walking Tour brochure. The brick pavilion was constructed in 1879 by P. J. and J. J. Tawney, temporarily extended in 1904, and is planned for restoration by 2013.[11]
Virginia Monument
Statue by Frederick William Sievers. The Virginia Monument is a Battle of Gettysburg memorial to the commonwealth's "Sons at Gettysburg" with a bronze statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse Traveller and a "bronze group of figures representing the Artillery, Infantry, and Cavalry of the Confederate Army". The equestrian statue is atop a granite pedestal and the group of six standing figures is on a sculptured bronze base with the figures facing the Field of Pickett's Charge and the equestrian statue of Union General George G. Meade on Cemetery Ridge.[12]
The Angle
The Angle is a Gettysburg Battlefield area which includes the 1863 Copse of Trees used as the target landmark for Pickett's Charge, the 1892 monument that marks the high-water mark of the Confederacy, a rock wall, and several other Battle of Gettysburg monuments.[13]
Soldiers' National Monument
War memorial in the Adams County, Pennsylvania. The Soldiers' National Monument is a Gettysburg Battlefield memorial which is located at the central point of Gettysburg National Cemetery. It honors the battle's soldiers and tells an allegory of "peace and plenty under freedom … following a heroic struggle." In addition to an inscription with the last 4 lines of the Gettysburg Address, the shaft with 4 buttresses has 5 statues:
A large statue representing the concept of Liberty surmounts the pedestal. Eighteen large bronze stars circling the pedestal below this statue represent the eighteen Union states with buried dead. A statue is located at each corner near the base. They represent War, History, Peace, and Plenty. War is represented by a statue of an American soldier who recounts the story of the battle to History. In turn, History records, with stylus and tablet, the achievements of the battle and the names of the honored dead. A statue of an American mechanic and his tools illustrates Peace. Plenty is a female figure with a sheaf of wheat and the fruits of the earth that typify peace and abundance as the soldier's crowning triumph.[14]
Sachs Covered Bridge
Truss bridge in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The Sachs Covered Bridge, also known as Sauck's Covered Bridge and Waterworks Covered Bridge, is a 100-foot, Town truss covered bridge over Marsh Creek between Cumberland and Freedom Townships, Adams County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The bridge was also known as the Sauches Covered Bridge at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
During the American Civil War, both the Union and Confederate Armies used the bridge in the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath. It is reportedly known to be severely haunted as a result.[15]
Address: Waterworks Road Tr 509/Tr 405, 17325 Gettysburg