The Importance of Culp's Hill in the Battle of Gettysburg

welcome and thank you for joining us for another online program from the adams county historical society my name is antigone lad and i serve on the board here and i'm delighted that i'm able to be your host for several of these programs because i'm learning as much as any of the people in our audience and i've had a chance to meet some delightful speakers i hope you've been enjoying the series as well if so i hope you will consider making a donation to help us keep the programs running there is a button on the bottom of your screen that makes it safe and secure to make a donation of any size and we would appreciate it very very much a speaker this evening is charlie fennel a licensed battlefield guide here in gettysburg since 1986. charlie is a fascinating guide i have been on some of his tours and attended his sessions he makes learning fun he has a way of telling a story that brings it to life and makes you want to know more he has become an expert on culps hill and that is the topic that he's going to talk about this evening but from a slightly different perspective charlie's going to of course cover the basics of the battle and why and how it happened here in gettysburg and the people involved but i've asked him if he would talk about what happened after the battle why it was visited why the visitation dropped off at some point until it suddenly became a not very popular area an important part of the battlefield for tourists and how that has changed and he's also going to talk about the new renovations planned for cops hill so charlie is going to walk us through the history of the importance and significance of culps hill and the changes for today but let me start by asking charlie a personal question if he would introduce himself by telling us a little bit about his background how and when did he get interested in this very specific topic of culps hill probably the least known part of the battle for most tourists charlie can i ask you to tell us a little bit about what piqued your interest and how you started doing the research that has turned you into the cultsville expert all yours well uh people often ask me you know where did you get your interest in culps hill and it was when i was working on my phd at west virginia university i was guiding at gettysburg i started guiding in 1986 and i was nearing the decision phase in my studies to pick a topic i found that i would spend a lot of time at gettysburg and so i decided that perhaps the best thing for me to do would be to pick a topic on gettysburg so that i could put the two together guiding and and researching uh the phd dissertation at the same time and i found that talking to people not too many really knew uh what happened on culps hill i mean you had the general understanding you know spangler spring and the fighting the entrenchments uh this sort of thing but no one could really tell me uh you know uh beyond that and so this so wow i can i can do this and actually find out something that uh you know i didn't know before which is what research is is all about and so i started researching it and eventually got the phd and uh on coal seal it was focused on greens brigade primarily in the fighting on july 2nd there so it was a uh more of a a tactical study but i i found much significance in the fighting is for for the uh for the future i mean for for modern warfare i mean you have entrenchment you have interlocking fields of fire uh you have a basically a slugfest of people shooting at one another it's almost like the vision of world war one uh there on colps hill on july 2nd and third of 1863 and so this is how i became i guess the uh the go-to guy if you will if you have a question about colts hill go ask charlie okay there are quite a few people now which have a very very good understanding of corpse hill uh basically it's uh most of them are you know guys from guide force of gettysburg that have to deal with that hill and have to deal with questions that people ask so that's how i got interested in corpse hill i'm still interested in colts hill and i'll be very happy to see that hill returned to the way it looked in 1863. tonight we're going to be talking about the importance of corpse hill in the battle of gettysburg for the adams county historical society cult's hill as we know is one of the three major terrain features of the battlefield of gettysburg a story of three hills cemetery hill little round top and culps hill the two most important of the hills would be cemetery hill culp sale that you see here on your screen okay here you can see culps hill and cemetery hill two of the most important terrain features of the battlefield of gettysburg because they dominate the baltimore pike here in the base of this photograph you can see a part of the baltimore pike the story of gettysburg of course is a story of roads ten roads converge on the town and the most important of them of all the 10 roads is the baltimore pike as we know it doesn't go to baltimore it goes to washington dc and the army of the potomac commanded for the first time by george gordon meade has the mission of trying to screen washington dc from the army of northern virginia and robert e lee so controlling the road here at the base of this photograph is key to understanding the battle especially after the first day's encounter okay as we know the first day encounter was an accidental chance meeting of the two armies as they were maneuvering for position in south central pennsylvania ten roads brought them into confrontation at gettysburg okay the first day of the battle of gettysburg resulted in an incomplete confederate victory and as we know the northern troops retreated through the town of gettysburg back to these two back to cemetery hill that you see here in the foreground and there uh the importance of corpse hill becomes known this is the man this many of you recognize as general winfield scott hancock he was sent by george gordon mead who's new to command as we know to assess the situation after meade was informed of the death of general john reynolds so hancock arrives at gettysburg around 4 00 pm and notices the union retreat back to cemetery hill he's there to assess the practicality of fighting a battle at gettysburg and so as he looked around he knows that the hills tended to dominate the main road baltimore pike which was the line of command and control for the union army as well as a main uh way uh mainline to washington dc uh and he wrote made a note and he said we have a great position here as long as it's not turned and so uh hancock was the first to recognize the significance of cult seal and sent wadsworth division there roughly around 5 p.m on the evening of july the first to take possession of it because if you don't hold culp hill it's very difficult to hold cemetery hill so hancock hancock is the architect of the famous gettysburg fishhook line if you remember how that works the corpse hills the barb the hook or the short end that bends around cemetery hill and then winds up anchoring on a little round top okay and so uh culp hill is an integral part of that fishhook position there's the baltimore pike this is an edwin forbes sketch done during the battle this is a more watercolor rendition of it all that traffic you see with the wagon in the foreground here this is the baltimore pike okay this is the one the most important road of the ten that come to gettysburg this is cemetery hill here that goes right over the top and over here on the right is culps hill okay so edmund forbes is showing us the importance of the baltimore pike to the union army uh but also the importance of these two hills which dominate uh that baltimore pike so this is the reason why uh corpse hill was so no it was was necessary for the union to hold okay we know on july the 2nd that general lee will plan an offensive it will be conducted initially by general longstreet on pawn the union left which if you remember is a little round top to be supported in the center by general hills third core and then general yuel's second core to make a simultaneous demonstration to be converted into a real attack should the opportunity present itself uh as that battle progresses and longstreet begins to drive in sickles salient mead will order the entire 12th corps off of culp's hill perhaps his greatest mistake uh in the battle of gettysburg certainly one of his officers said so oliver otis howard said the greatest mistake made by bios at gettysburg was order of the 12th corps off of culp sale and once again ladies and gentlemen you can see the proximity of the baltimore pike to culp's hill so as the union troops were leaving culp sale the confederates noticed and here you can see their assault on july 2nd so culp sail would be attacked by johnson's division of three brigades and greens one brigade will be left behind to defend the hill green has approximately 1424 men johnson will bring nearly 5 000 men to the attack nowhere on the field of gettysburg even on the first day did the confederates have such a numerical advantage as they did on culps hill on july 2nd clearly uh three to one uh in in in numbers at this point okay the greens men were able to stave off the attack they will lose the lower part of the hill which is the only part of the union fishhook that was occupied and held by the confederate army during the entire battle of gettysburg and if you look at this map once again you can see confederates who will seize this portion lower portion of the union line just above pardee field will be within not much more than 500 yards of the baltimore pike and although this map shows artillery in position these guns were gone on july 2nd they had followed the 12th corps off towards the peach orchard and were not there so there's very little if anything between the confederates and the baltimore pike here on the lower slopes of culps hill okay so on july the 3rd as we know one side knew how close they came to win in the battle that would be the confederates and the other side knew how close they came to losing the battle and that would be the union and both sides channeled in reinforcements on july 3rd to the tune of about a little over 9 000 confederates and a little over 12 000 union troops roughly about 40 yards apart waiting for it to get light enough on the morning of july the 3rd to know who to shoot at and that action will begin roughly at 4 30 in the morning and will continue until nearly 11 30 that day roughly seven hours of close combat it's the longest sustained major fighting of the entire battle of gettysburg and when it was over the confederates were unable to seize the hill and then were forced to retreat giving up ground on the union fishhook that they controlled for the first time in the battle so if you want to really see the receding tide of the confederates that can easily be seen here on culps hill on the morning of july the 3rd so that gives us a little overview of the fighting on culps hill and hopefully a little bit of significance of it there was very significant at the time of the battle in fact one union soldier said the battle could not have been won except for what greene and his men had done on culps hill okay so this is a participant in the battle another participant said the battle was very significant not for the numbers involved because the numbers there are very small in relation to fighting on other parts of the field that are much more famous today than cops hill but for the results that would have occurred had green's men not been able to stave off the confederates on july the 2nd and corps hill initially was one of the more visited parts of the battlefield that i'll attempt to show you here one of the things that you can see on cops hill even right after the battle where the union breast works on july the 1st as i indicated earlier general wadsworth's division was since the culps hill uh they had been pretty well shot up on the first day of the battle that's the iron brigade and cutler's brigade for those who want more information and they erected a series of breast works in this photograph here which was taken in the 1880s from corpse hill looking at cemetery hill you can see the breastworks running through the woodline you could see them today if you come in december because this area today is all overgrown there and very little can be seen but those are still in the woods this would be breastworks of the iron brigade uh there that that it fought so uh desperately on july the first here's another view of the breast works that were constructed by the iron brigade looking up towards culps hill from stevens knoll so this in many ways ladies and gentlemen are the first monuments uh gettysburg they were built by the soldiers to defend the ground there and and were preserved after the battle okay of course the architect of victory on culps hill would be george sears green green is somewhat a forgotten hero of gettysburg there he's 62 at the time of the battle was born in 1801 that died 1899 he lived to be 98 years old 62 as i said at the time of the battle of gettysburg he was second in his class at west point in 1823 i guess he didn't try hard enough but the guy who graduated first for those who want to know was alfred mordecai and greene married alfred mordecai's sister his first wife who died with their three children in the 1830s uh there so green got out of the army went into engineering projects he mis missed the mexican war in 1861 when the war begins he is the city engineer of new york city he actually designed part of the uh of the city and established the croton reservoir uh that which new york still gets drinking water from to this day okay at gettysburg he's a brigade commander and commands a brigade of all new yorkers uh there and they were the ones that were left on culp's hill green here has a monument on cops hill uh it's interesting to note that there are only two brigade commanders on the entire battlefield of gettysburg that have standing portrait monuments dedicated solely to them and one is general green and the other one is general webb in the angle okay so these guys appeared they must have done something very significant to be distinguished by having their own standing portrait monuments green monument was dedicated in 1907 just about eight years after his death and he's pointing at his line on culp's hill he was uh famous enough to rate a postcard in 19 in the early 1900s and there you can see green once again pointing and in the background the tower erected on culp seal tower was put up in 1895 monument 1907 so those are roughly around 19 teams that you find the uh postcard the green still on the hill to this day but these are the breast works uh that he had has been constructed and this is to me is one of the most significant uh pictures of the battle of gettysburg uh these entrenchments that you see here were constructed on the morning of july the second by men of green's new york brigade and they're fairly substantial as you can see you can see two individuals sitting on a rock and they are two of brady's photographic assistance brady as you know would always put a figure in his photograph so you would know the scale of the picture that you were looking at a couple of things you note from this photograph uh the substantial nature of the breast works of course you can see the headlogs on the top this is military engineering at its finest here's the head log as you can see because if you stick your head up over the breastwork what's sticking up is your head head rhymes with the word dead and there's a reason for it if you're shot in the head you're pretty much done and so they would put these head logs they would shoot under the log and over the wall and this gave them some protection you also notice that the breastworks turn okay so green is establishing uh what we today would call interlocking fields of fire so as the confederates advance they will be channeled into this killing ground between converging fields of fire this is still as valid today as it was in 1863. one of the things i do want to point out in this photograph and then several photographs that i will show you in the course of this program is how little undergrowth there is in this photograph and this is the way the hill looked in 1863. this photograph ladies and gentlemen was taken on july the 15th 1863. so what did it look like then it looked like this exactly like this okay and the uh these uh woods at gettysburg were considered what we would call today manicured woodlots the farmers would allow their animals especially cows pigs to wander through the woods and eat the undergrowth okay they also use the trees for firewood for fence rail replacement and to be sent to sawmills for board lumber and so these these woods are constantly being uh gleaned of trees there so this is the way they would look in 1863 it's hard to envision fighting on culps hill if you go there today because you can't even see into the woods let alone walk through okay and so this this photograph is very instructive along those lines and this is uh the beauty of general green military engineering at its finest here's the the vision of them today can you find them well they're right here the press works right there uh this part of the of the hill was maintained because that's where the monuments are okay and so they have to mow there but this part has been allowed to go back to nature and so it's uh one of the reasons corpse hill is not as well visited today is because what do you see when you get there and the answer is very little very little of the significance of the fighting on culp's hill in fact these two guys are sitting on a rock that rock is right down here by this big tree uh there so you can actually sit on that rock and get your picture taken right there as if you were in the battle of gettysburg here's another photograph uh which indicates one of the reasons why uh people came to cops hill you can see battle damage these are trees and these holes in them are bullet holes they're shot all the way up and through uh this gentleman was the man uh that was sitting on the rock in the earlier photograph brady told them go down there lay down and brady initially labeled this dead union soldier on culp's hill okay but anyway you notice this looks like brush laying down at the forest floor that's actually limbs shot off the trees they're falling down on july the third in seven hours john white geary's division 3 900 men okay and this is without casualties of course which they had taken a few by that time will fire 277 000 bullets nine hundred men two hundred and seventy seven thousand bullets in seven hours let's look at twenty four thousand men in seven hours how many bullets will they fire and the answer is they will fire well over 1.5 million bullets were fired on the slopes of culps hill just on july 3rd alone this does not include the three hours plus fighting on july the 2nd so if you want to see battle damage you go to culps hill because that's where you would find it at the time this is matthew brady sitting on a rock you can see a big rock here once again shut up trees uh this is to the left of the other photograph i showed you where the gentleman was lying down uh these are called the forbes rocks today because he sketched them uh there and you can see the holes in the trees uh there this rock uh is missing today you won't find it if you go to cops hill because it's green's head stove they took this rock from corpse hill and put it over green up in warwick rhode island which is where he's buried today so once again you see the holes in the trees look how open the undergrowth is uh there in the in this photograph uh here's a sketch this is why this is a forb sketch here you can see the rocks see how open they are and these rocks this is the rock that brady was sitting on in the previous photograph and here you can see the union line up here behind breastworks and the confederates desperately trying to move up uh to try and seize that position on july 2nd and once again on july 3. notice once again in this sketch very little undergrowth hardly any at all so a bunch of it's an open it's an open forest okay here's a fuller view of it there uh these rocks are still there obviously these are the green rocks forbs rocks confederate rocks if you will union rocks there and they're not very far apart they're not very far apart indeed let me think uh you're probably looking at less than a football field distance between these rocks in 1863. here you can see confederate reinforcements coming up to try and push over the hill in this sketch notice the broken limbs on the trees there and of course the rocks giving the confederates some cover not as much as a union of forces hat but there this is a another this is a wrathable painting uh many of you might remember rothamel he painted where pennsylvania won the war at gettysburg and this is one of his famous paintings uh here's it's up in the uh rotunda i guess of the capital in harrisburg pennsylvania and this is geary over here john white geary of pennsylvania 6'5 205 pounds he commands the white star division you can see a white star on the flag and this is keynes brigade and once again you can see here the line that the men have as the confederates made one last desperate assault to try and break through the line and gain the baltimore pike in the rear of the entire union army once again the point uh the reason i show this is to show you how open once again the woods are okay here and here i like okay the confederates were unsuccessful in this last desperate attempt it occurred probably around 10 30 11 o'clock on july the 3rd and once again you can see the union earthworks breast works if you will defensive position forcing the confederates into converging fields of fire okay so once again this is a sketch now of course corpse hill as i indicated earlier was one of the more visited areas and certainly was considered one of the most significant areas of the fighting at gettysburg this uh rather uh you know an exciting monument if you will unless you're from massachusetts is most important because this is the first unit the second massachusetts uh to document their battlefield position 1879 the men from massachusetts assembled this is actually an 18 i think 85 photograph as they came back for a reunion but anyway here you can see the monument and the survivors of the second massachusetts and friends as they're assembled there to remember the the uh the fight that they made here on july 3rd 1863. this is this starts what we today refer to as monument madness because if the second massachusetts has a monument everybody else wants one too and so from this every union unit in the battle of gettysburg will have at least one marker on the field to document where they fought but that starts here at the base of culps hill they're actually looking into spangler's meadow behind this little rise is the baltimore pike okay so this is the second massachusetts monument 1879 the first unit monument on the field at gettysburg interesting to note that the first confederate monument placed anywhere on the field of gettysburg was placed on the lower slope of culps hill and this is the second maryland is really the first maryland but they made him change it to second maryland on the front go around the back it says first maryland two flank markers it's the only confederate monument that has flank markers say first maryland the advanced marker that says first maryland and the two government tablets that mention it say first maryland so what is it is it the first or the second maryland i would argue it's the first maryland in fact it's the only maryland infantry unit in the confederate army at gettysburg hence you see csa confederate states of america this monument was placed here and dedicated in 1886 on november 19th the date may ring a bell with some of you that's the date that lincoln delivered his gettysburg address but that was in 1863. i think they picked that date on purpose suggesting that the confederate dead were were honored too and so they went up uh and this breaks the color barrier ladies and gentlemen because of maryland can put a monument here in mississippi and the answer is yes so uh if they would then allow the maryland uh confederates to erect this monument on corpse hill chances are you wouldn't have any confederate monuments on the battlefield of gettysburg whatsoever here in the foreground you can see some rocks sticking up a little bit of rise and ground there that's union earthworks the confederation sees these on july the 2nd it's interesting to note that there is a little bit of a controversy involving this monument and the placement of it and the wording the union veterans they established a uh the battlefield memorial association and this was chartered by the state of pennsylvania in april of 1864. now correct me if i'm wrong didn't the war last until april of 1865 but yet you have an association established to preserve and memorialize the battlefield at gettysburg a year before the war ends so i think the people at the time realized what an important event gettysburg was and culps hill was one of the initial purchases i believe in august of 1863 three tracks of groud were purchased by a group of businessmen in town headed by david mcconaghy and they purchased cops hill east cemetery hill and little round top as he explained where the artificial and natural defenses saved the union artificial would be the breastworks the natural be the hills themselves okay and so this monument as it was placed the wording on the side said that they took these breastworks on july 2nd the members of the memorial association said you didn't take them they were not occupy you actually occupied and poor confederates are thinking well if we if we if they weren't occupied who was shooting at us then okay but anyway they got the arguing over this and finally uh one guy down and i think it was down pikesville maryland where they were holding their meeting suggested well if we we took them doesn't that mean we occupied and they said yeah and so they accepted the change of wording from took to occupy and that's how the monument was allowed to be placed if they insisted on keeping took chances are they wouldn't have got permission to erect the monument here at gettysburg so just keep in mind that all the monuments northern and southern were reviewed initially by a board of veterans that fought in the battle of gettysburg and if not in the civil war okay so it wasn't you know that these were just put up here randomly uh they had to be placed where they they formed for battle and now what was what was on them had to be pretty much accurate okay there so this is the first confederate monument and for many years was the only confederate monument uh on the field of gettysburg was placed on as i said the lower slope of culps hill as i indicated to you earlier uh you know people came to culps hill initially a number of reasons for that certainly was the battle damage i indicated earlier uh other was as accessible as close to the baltimore pike which is one of the reasons why it was significant uh during the fighting and of course there's shade you know who wants to be riding around uh in a full co dress uh you know because when you went to tour in those days you got dressed up you didn't just go in shorts and a t-shirt uh you wore thai having more skirts you know full-length dresses and so the culps hill provided shade there as you could tour the battlefield they also have convenient springs some spangler springs that i'll mention a little later you see a splintered tree here that was splintered during the battle these rocks you see here are greens rocks this is part of green's trench line on the hill on july 2nd and 3rd 1863 and here you can see liver pills oh my gosh everybody's got to have liver pills you know and here hoofland's german bitters these are advertisements painted on the rocks on culps hill you're looking at it from the buggy trail essentially and so as you're riding your buggy up to get to the top of culp's hill you'd look to your right and you would see these advertisements okay the base of this photograph which i believe is a copy is the originals in the adams county historical society's collection there says commercial desecration of the battlefield of gettysburg and the date ladies and gentlemen is 1867 1867 okay so commercial exploitation or encroachment as we call it today is not a new thing at gettysburg it goes back and here you have perhaps the earliest example of it here on colps hill okay here's spangler's spring there were two springs okay and once again you can see the trees but very little underground of course this is taken in the in the winter maybe late fall early spring uh whenever and here you can see the springs uh the soldiers gathered water from these springs during the battle though not simultaneously as is sometimes reported this area the springs became more uh significant as a i guess a symbol of reconciliation after the war was over but here you see a gentleman there in his in his sports coop stopping for a drink at spangler spring but what i have led to believe i say one spring was for the people and the other was for the animals okay just kind of remember to keep them straight uh this is spangler's uh meadow uh and up here is party field here above the trees uh there that you see in the distance okay and so you can see here is he's either a local uh there he's a tourist uh visiting culps hill here you can see a modern group this looks like the 1950s maybe early 60s to me and remember i told you they got dressed up to take tours in those days and here they are sharing a cup here on culp's hill at spangler spring i used to be able to get the water out of the spring and then i believe in the 1960s the park service put a waterfall in there so that you could go down drink the water the soldiers drank that was actually gettysburg city water but it was the thought that mattered as you can see here the the spring was memorialized there were three springs that were documented the most famous is spangler spring there was menchie spring at the base of cemetery hill in a kodori spring that was out near the pennsylvania monument these all had iron tablets indicating their presence because they were used by union soldiers to gather water during the fighting remember they fought in july in wool uniforms so one of the most precious commodities of the battlefield was the water they could provide to the thirsty soldiers that fought there so here you can see spangler spring and the people getting the water that the soldiers drank but you can't get water out of spangler spring today in the 1990s they took the waterfowl now and so it's just a shell of itself today and you can stand there and see it and wonder what it's why why it's important it's important because this is where the veterans would come to uh to heal gettysburg was not only the killing fields it was the healing fields of the civil war where the veterans of the blue and grey came to forget uh their differences okay became a great symbol of reconciliation between the north and the south of course corpse hill today is one of the least visited areas of the battlefield i always tell people here we have two hills we have one for the visitors and that's a little round top uh which where people go in great numbers today if for no other reason because of a movie called gettysburg that emphasized the fighting on what the 20th maine and joshua lawrence chamberlain did to save the union uh at the left flank of the union line on july 2nd the other hill is cops hill that's for the locals for people like us that live in gettysburg where we can go and walk our dogs and our husbands okay and be away from the uh the hustle and bustle of visitation even in the peak time uh in the summer cult sale is not as well visited and the reason is uh there's not much to see when you go there i mean you go to a little round top you get the view pickets charge you got the view not many people go to cemetery hill because what you see here the encroachment of the town of gettysburg on that hill there as well though single of the buildings on cemetery hill like the gatehouse for example were historic were actually there during the fighting but as you can see here plenty of monuments on culps hill you have a double wide of monuments on either side of the road and there aren't many places at gettysburg where you can drive and see monuments on both sides of the road one of them is hancock avenue which is pickett's charge area there as well okay so people got out of the habit of coming to colps hill probably in the 1890s turn of the century one of the reasons being is because modern roads gave you access to other parts of the battlefield like little round top and once again got a little round top got the great view see the vistas uh there which is uh uh awe inspiring uh to this day one of the interesting developments uh going on on culps hill is that they are planning to take out over 18 acres of woods and open the hill up to the way it looked in 1863 and as i showed you earlier we have photographs to indicate what the hill looked like in 1863 that's probably going to start this spring they're not going to take all the trees but you're going to take probably about 80 percent of them clear out the undergrowth they're going to put in walking trails interpretation so that you can see the battlefield from the confederate point of view you can look up at culp's hill and see it the way the confederates saw it as one confederate said we needed scaling ladders to take that hill you don't get that perspective from standing at the top looking down the hills are much bigger from the bottom up than they are from the top dial if you don't believe me walk them you'll find out so they're going to do that they're going to put in waysides there and for interpretation including some of the photographs i showed you you're also going to reconstruct some breast works to show you what the breast works actually look like on colts hill so this is this is in the works going on uh there's a three phase project okay the first phase will clear out in front of a greens line which is here in this photograph okay the second phase i believe will clear out down towards the spangler's meadow into rock creek there and the third phase will clear the hill to the views that you could see cemetery hill from culp sail so eventually you know given time culps hill will look like it did in 1863 and one of the things pushing pushing this of course as some of you are aware is they're going to close a little round time they're going to close it for 18 months minimum for rehabilitation because the hill is being loved to death it's wearing out as people climb all over it look like a bunch of ants on a sugar cube climb all over the hill and devil's dead as well another attraction you can see from a little round top uh there so where are the visitors gonna go and the answer uh as the park superintendent explained in the meeting uh that we had on zoom uh why not culps hill let's open that up get some people over there maybe spread out the visitation so that one hill doesn't get too much abuse or too much use shall we say uh interesting to note uh back in the 1990s when they established a plan for maintenance the maintenance plan given in limited resources they divided the battlefield into class a b and c areas of course a class a area would be like pickett's charge lower round top guess what class corpse hill was corpse hill was class c lowest priority okay so corpse hill uh may be coming into its own here uh in the next couple of years and uh maybe will be as as talked about or as visited as a little round top if they can get it open and get people to understand it so uh if you want to enjoy culps hill uh the privacy uh that it affords today i would get there in the next two years because once this project starts i envision uh much more uh visitation and people uh coming to culps hill so i want to thank you for letting me share culps hill with you i hope you have a better appreciation for the importance of the hill and the fighting the significance of it and i hope you're excited as i am about the restoration project that is in the works thank you so much charlie thank you for that excellent program thank you for sharing your time and your expertise and for sharing the news of the renovations coming up on culps hill and i thank all of you for being in our audience and continuing to support the adams county historical society i hope you will check out our website to follow news of our capital campaign as we try to build a new home for your history thank you and good evening you

Channel: Adams County Historical Society at Gettysburg

Views: 4,061

Rating: 4.8928571 out of 5

Keywords: Civil War, Battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg, Culp's Hill

Id: fp5sfG-9-BY

Length: 42min 46sec (2566 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021