Gettysburg Historical Trail

26-28 March 2010

During the weekend of 26 through 28 March 2010, a small band of Scouts and Scouters of Troop 461 enjoyed a weekend and hiking and camping in south central Pennsylvania.  The troop camped at Camp Tuckahoe near Dillsburg, York County, for the  weekend and used it as their base of operations for their trip to the National Military Historical Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Camp Tuckahoe is run by the York-Adams Area Council and is located a few miles to the west of US Route 15 near Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.  The camp is located southwest of Pennsylvania's capital city, Harrisburg.  Camp Tuckahoe is approximately 125 miles from Souderton and despite the fact that the trip is mostly by limited access highway, we did not arrive at the camp until after 9:00 p.m. on Friday night.  By the time we checked in with the camp master and found our assigned campsite, it was nearly 10:00 p.m. when we began unloading our vehicles and setting up our camp site.

Friday night turned out to be rather chilly and temperatures in the 20s prompted most of the Scouts to rise early to get a fire and breakfast going.  The same cannot be said for several of the Adult Leaders, including the two kitchen supervisors, who had to be awakened in order to eat breakfast.  While they did not mind setting up and cooking breakfast without the adult kitchen crew, the Scouts were not about to serve the late risers breakfast in bed!

Saturday was taken up with the Scouts visiting the new Visitor's Centre at the Gettysburg National Military Historical Park and hiking the Billy Yank trial for those portions of their Gettysburg trail patches.  The new Visitor's Centre at Gettysburg was opened in 2008 and this trip was the Troop's first time visiting the new centre.  One mainstay of the old Visitor's Centre, the electric map of the Battle of Gettysburg, is no longer operational.  The map itself is on display and guides explain the course of the battle using a laser pointer, but it just is not the same.  There are quite a few new features in the new centre, however.  The new centre is much larger than the old and there is an enlarged museum and gift shop.  The new centre also sports a refreshment shop where visitors can get a bite to eat and something to drink, but the prices are pretty steep!  A refurbished Cyclorama painting of the battle is now located in the new Visitor's Centre.

The Gettysburg Trail badge is made up of five (5) portions: 1) the main or Visitor's Centre portion; 2) the Billy Yank trail portion; 3) the Johnny Reb trail portion; 4) the Eisenhower Farm portion; and 5) the historic Gettysburg portion.  The Visitor's Centre portion of the Gettysburg Trail badge involves finding the answers posed in the trail booklet relating to the exhibits found in the Visitor's Centre.  Completion of that portion of the trail entitles the Scout to the centre portion of the trail badge featuring President Abraham Lincoln.  The photo above left shows the informational kiosk outside of the new Visitor's Centre which gives an overview of the park itself and a general synopsis of the Battle of Gettysburg and its importance in the American Civil War. 

Once they had completed the Visitor's Centre portion of the trail, the Scouts headed to the Gettysburg National Cemetery to begin the Billy Yank trail.  The photo above right shows much of our group at the entrance to the National Cemetery.  The Billy Yank trail takes the hiker through that area of the park where the second and third days of the battle took place on 2 and 3 July 1863.  It begins at the Gettysburg National Cemetery where a number of Federal soldiers who were killed in the battle are buried.  Not surprisingly, no Confederate soldiers are buried in the cemetery, which is not surprising considering the fact that they were considered as "enemy combatants" when the cemetery was dedicated in November of 1863.  From the National Cemetery, the trail takes the hiker through the lines of battle of and positions held by General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac on the second and third days.  Highlights of that portion are places such as the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, Little Round Top, which possesses a commanding view of the entire battlefield, and the High Water Mark, which was the objective of the 13,000 man strong Confederate assault force during Pickett's Charge on 3 July 1863.  The trail is approximately ten (10) miles in length and the Scouts were also using the trail as one of the required ten (10) mile hikes for completion of their Hiking Merit Badge. The photo to the left shows some of our Scouts and leaders answering the questions posed by the guidebook in the National Cemetery.  The monument in the background is the Soldier's Memorial that lies within the National Cemetery.  The photo to the left shows four (4) of our leaders - Fred Crouthamel, Tom Isban, Scott Forwood, and Patty Guttenplan, approaching the Pennsylvania Memorial.  At the top of the photo one can see one of the many artillery pieces which dot the battlefield along with one of the unit or regimental memorials commemorating the position of one of the units of the Army of the Potomac.  A hot meal was provided to the hikers in the Devil's Den area, a collection of large boulders where Confederate sharpshooters picked off Federal officers surveying the battlefield from Little Round Top.

Once the Scouts had reached Little Round Top, they moved along the trial from positions held by the Army of the Potomac to those that were held by the Army of Northern Virginia on 2 and 3 July 1863.  On this side of the battlefield, the memorials are erected in memory of the Confederate units that took part in the Battle of Gettysburg.  However, unlike the memorials and monuments on the Federal side, the Confederate memorials are erected by the various Southern states to honour the soldiers from their states who fought in the battle, rather than individual regiments or units of the Army of Northern Virginia erecting their own individual monuments.  This distinction was the result of a prohibition against Confederate monuments and memorials that existed in the decades following the Civil War and the Southern monuments were, as a result, erected much later than their Northern counterparts.  The Confederate portion of the Billy Yank trail nears its completion at the Virginia monument, which is placed near where the Confederate assault force began Pickett's Charge on the afternoon of 3 July 1863.  The Scouts then traced the path of Pickett's Charge through more than a mile of open fields towards the stone wall and copse of trees which mark the farthest point of the Confederate advance that afternoon.  More than half of the Confederate soldiers who began Pickett's Charge were casualties and were not among the members of the assault force that returned to the Confederate lines an hour later after the assault was repulsed by Federal troops holding the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. 

This page last updated on Sunday, 04 April 2010