Pennsylvania: Survivor Trees of Gettysburg Battlefield cut down for authentic restoration?
The National Park Service has a curious way of protecting history. The
Service cut down four “witness trees” from the Gettysburg battlefield.
The white oak trees were between 160 and 229 years old and were
present at the battle. They were supposed to be protected, but the NPS
appears to chop now and ask questions later on matters of history. The
NPS policy appears to be to cut down and let God sort them out.
The service has been thinning the forest at the battlefield to allow smaller trees to grow. All three trees were within a couple of hundred yards of each other. The NPS and its defenders do not appear particularly concerned over the act of gross recklessness: “well, when you cut down hundreds of trees, you’re bound to make some mistakes and cut down some witness trees.”
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Last winter, I was walking with my wife along Seminary Ridge on the
Gettysburg battlefield when an odd detail drew into sight: piles of
felled trees, stacked alongside a road. The cuts smelled as fresh as
the trees looked strong. What happened to them, we wondered? I grew up
in Gettysburg, and my mother still lives in the shadow of Lutheran
Theological Seminary, low in the lap of the ridge it names.
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Seminary Ridge is one of a string of ridges surrounding the town;
General Robert E. Lee stood there on July 2 and 3, 1863.
The woods atop the ridge had made it a sublime place to stroll for as long as I
could remember–until that winter walk, which ended with a logging
truck lumbering by. In the hope of providing visitors with an
authentic historical experience, the National Park Service (NPS) was
seeking to restore some of Gettysburg’s landscapes to their condition
when the Union and Confederate armies clashed on them. And so the
trees that once crowned Devil’s Den–from whose crevices Confederate
sharpshooters picked off Union soldiers– were missing, also.
Hundreds of acres of woodland, actually, were gone or going. (In July 1863, the battlefield contained 898 acres of woodland; since that time, the
number has grown to roughly 2,000.) The “rehabilitation,” many and
varied in its activities, has also rebuilt fences, replanted orchards,
and demolished large buildings, including a car dealership. The goal,
as NPS regional director Don Barger told The Christian Science Monitor
in April, is to make visitors “almost feel the bullets. … That is
what you want to have happen in a battlefield.”
The project likely delights the reenactors who troop to Gettysburg every year in pursuit of authenticity, as well as those tourists who expect less to
encounter history during their battlefield trip than to experience it.
But my wife Anna felt foul about my explanation of salvation-through-improvement, and together we ruminated on her instinctual reaction at Seminary Ridge: Did those trees really have to go? The more we thought about this question, the more the whole project troubled us.
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I don’t think they should be cutting down the trees. the trees help us in so many ways
truly I have to disagree with you. The witness tree has no eyes. It cannot tell a story. I simply stood on the ground when the battle happened. The battlefield has changed so much since 1863 that it is no longer possible for most people to understand the flow of the battle or why actions took place. Entire forests now stand where empty fields once were. If the National parks service can complete this project and recreate this battlefield to its 1863 condition it will be a monumental task that will honor those who fought there, and will serve as a remarkable took to teach history to all who visit it. An old tree, while it may be a beautiful site, and remarkable for its longevity can do none of those things.
Ok trees do not have eyes as historical buildings, rocks, and earthern works do neither. The witness trees are more than a witness to the battle, they have witnessed most of American history. The rehabilitation effort is mostly a joke becauase until someone destroys all the fast food restaurants, gas stations, and hotels around Cemetery hill then the battlefield will look more like the historical one. Taking out large possible witness trees especially the ones on Big Round Top an area that has been wooded for centuries and to not just let nature do her thing is defintely wrong and a disgrace. Anyone interested in information and picutes of the more than 300 witness trees I have found drop me an email at goberg4@aol.com. Thanks for your time.
The Gettysburg National Park service (non-service)along with the State gameland service(non-service) seem to be hell bent on going after the old growth trees. I feel that they want, in a way they want to make their mark much like a male dog that pisses here and there. If you ever saw tree cutters up close and in action they looked pie eyed and possessed. I live near Colebrook and Mtn Grenta in Pa. and the state gameland jackasses keep nipping and nipping every year at the trees there. These people need some other thing to do to occupy their time. One other thing that i witnessed, they like to copycat what other tree cutters are doing or have done, much like a little kid.
I always have mixed feelings about the reclamation project underway on the Gettysburg battlefield. I have been visiting the battlefield for decades and have grown in both my understanding of the battle and of the folks who lived through the ordeal, soldiers and civilians. As a person interested in history I can also appreciate the dilemma of what to save and what to let go of. I appreciate the opportunity to “see” what the soldiers saw in 1863. I also miss the eyesore of a tower that was the only bird’s eye vantage point I could access (yes, I am terrified of heights) to put many things into perspective. I always visit the trees that remain as reminders of the events that happened in 1863. They are, for me, touchstones – living reminders of what happened. They are tangible and I can put my hands on them unlike many other artifacts that I can only behold from a distance. Witness trees, if you do any digging into the origin of terms, were trees that could be used to delineate property lines and used by surveyors to construct boundaries when subdividing properties. Folks were reluctant to cut them down because they were useful in that context and often the only significant features on a piece of property. Of course, today we have more modern ways of accomplishing this task. We also have given a more “sacred” (if you will) meaning to the term “witness tree”. I’ve always wondered just how one determines which trees are “witness trees” . The obvious way is to find a photograph and locate the tree in the exact same spot in the photograph that it occupies today. I’m not sure this is always foolproof. Knowing something about the growth habits of a particular species is always helpful. A friend of mine gave me a formula that is used by arborists to estimate the age of a tree. If taken together, perhaps the three processes can help more clearly define which tree(s) are witness trees. It is all a pretty time consuming process and I can imagine how one would feel when faced with a forest of trees to decipher. I can on some level agree with the folks who feel that really restoring the vistas should include clearing away the modern intursions along Steinware Avenue but then one could argue that the shops, etc. were built up to assist the veterans returning to the battlefield to relive with their families the scene of perhaps the defining moment of their lives. How many folks know there was a park in the vicinity of Little Roundtop and Devil’s Den or that a trolley brought visitors to the spot to picnic? I recently learned that there was an observation tower located on Big Roundtop that was erected to assist returning veterans and their families to “see” the surrounding countryside that their relatives had traversed in order to arrive at Gettysburg and take part in one of the many significant “actions” of the Civil War. I was also introduced to the quarry at Devil’s Den where stone for some of the monuments was obtained. I’ve walked over that ground many times, through trees and thickets and never noticed. Now that the area is cleared, I can touch and see this interesting artifact. Where do we stop preserving memories? I don’t always agree with the park service plan nor do I fully agree with the sentiments of residents who opine the loss of forest and habitat. I do however, think that a reasonable compromise can be attained. Let’s continue to work toward that compromise. There is much to learn yet about those three days in July of 1863. Who knows what we will find when the trees come down. There are still beautiful natural sights to appreciate within the park. There really is something for everyone.