GDG- When is the best time to visit?

[Margaret D. Blough]

Chet,

I think one of the major reasons that winter was popular among the hard-core before the historic landscape restoration was not primarily avoiding the crowds (even at its busiest, there were a lot of areas of the battlefield that weren't crowded once you got away from the primary tourist stops like the High Water Mark, LRT, and Devil's Den) but the fact that, with the foliage gone, you could see a lot more of the battlefield.  As the landscape restoration continues, that will be less and less a factor.

Regards,

Margaret

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Chet Diestel" <chetd1 at comcast.net> 

> Esteemed GDG Member Contributes: 
> 
> 
> 
> : Re: GDG- When is the best time to visit? 
> 
> 
> Esteemed GDG Member Ron Chaplin Contributes: 
> 
> In response to: Alan Curragh 
> 
> Hi, Alan: 
> 
> I think that experiencing the battlefield at the same time of year that it 
> occurred would outweigh any difficulties with the increased number of 
> visitors, especially since changes are being made to it to make it look more 
> like it did when the battle was fought. 
> 
> Ron Chaplin 
> Iselin, New Jersey 
> 
> 
> Let me add my greement to Ron's view --- one gets so much more visiting a 
> battlefield as near as possible to the time of year it was fought. Touring a 
> battlefield is so much more than monuments, vintage cannons, historic 
> buildings and a visitor's center. 
> It is experiencing the battlefield, as closely as possible, to what the 
> men who fought there experiened in terms of climate, crops in the field, 
> foliage in the trees etc. Gettysburg in January is not the same ground men 
> fought and died for during those three days in July 1863. 
> For example, to understand how the lack of water effected the members of 
> the 15th Alabama in their assault on Little Round Top against the 20th 
> Maine, or why there were so many cases of heat prostration and sunstroke 
> among the force marching Union troops, it helps to experience the hot, humid 
> summer days of southeast Pennsylvania, where you may have to quickly slip on 
> the windbreaker to keep relatively dry during a drenching shower from a 
> summer storm while wandering through The Devil's Den only to find that after 
> the shower the humidity is even more oppressive. 
> And this timing rule of thumb holds not for just Gettysburg, but other 
> battlefields as well. Visit Shiloh in the spring with the trees all in 
> blossom, retrace Sherman's March to the Sea in late fall with a chill in the 
> air and an overcast to the sky and not an occasional deluge while trying to 
> cover 10 or 15 miles a day. 
> In short, touring Gettysburg in mid-winter is as productive to 
> understanding how climate played such an important role in the battle (as 
> well as how the battlefield looked) as touring the Bastogne, and other sites 
> that figured so prominently during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, 
> in mid-summer with the trees all green and the sun shinning and warm. It's 
> just not the same. 
> With regards, 
> Chet 
> 
> 
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