Destination - Antietam

Well, I made it to Antietam on Tuesday. I left my house at 6am with the hopes of finding Crampton's Gap before I made it to the battlefield (which opened at 8:30). I drove all over Rt. 67 and never found a sign or anything for the gap. This was a huge disappointment for me. But on I went and eventually found myself at the Visitor Center by 8:45. I was shocked at the number of cars in the parking lot at that time....it was about half full.

I went into the VC to pay the fee...for one person, it's $4.oo...for a family its $8.00 and the pass is good for three days. I don't mind paying for admission to a battlefield because I know that the money is going for a good cause. Antietam is so pure that I know that money will be used to help keep the purity of that ground.

I talked to one of the volunteers at the park and he was telling me about the different walking tours and then gave me the brochures on two of them: The Cornfield and The Bloody Lane. So off I went in search of the Cornfield. I learned a lot about the 6th WI and 1st TX on this tour and will talk about that in a later post. The path was 1.6 miles long and went around and through the Cornfield. It took me about an hour to walk it. I stopped along the way to take pictures of flowers and butterflys. I saw two little baby groundhogs at one point. Then on the way back I got some good shots of sheep...who seemed to want their pictures taken.

I then got back into my car and went on the driving tour. The tour takes you through the North Woods, East Woods, Cornfield, West Woods, Sunken Road (Bloody Lane) and Burnsides Bridge. To talk about each stop would cause me to go on forever. For some reason, when I reached Burnside Bridge I got goose bumps. Hmmmmm.

I was also able to take part in a small section of the Bloody Lane tour. But I had to get back to the VC by 1:00 so that I could go on a battlefield tour with a park ranger. I like how they do these tours. We met at the observation room in the VC and the ranger talked to us for about half an hour about the events that led up to the battle. We all went out to our cars and we followed the ranger to the Cornfield. The ranger was a gentleman named Mike Gamble and he was really interesting. He's a retired teacher and you can tell because he can tell a story in an interesting and exciting way. I thoroughly enjoyed this tour. We then moved on to the Sunken Road. Again the story of the events were explained to us in a very thorough and interesting way. The third stop was at Burnside Bridge. The day was getting very long and I had an hour+ drive home, so I never made it to that part of the tour.

Now, there were three things that I was looking for information on and here is what I found out about each:

1) 6th Wisconsin: They fought in the Cornfield. They came from the north heading south. This particular regiment in the Iron Brigade actually fought along side the Hagerstown Pike. They fought against William Starke.

2) Winfield Scott Hancock: He fought at the Sunken Road. When Richardson was killed, Hancock took over. He was told to hold his men at the Sunken Road. So he really didn't do too much at this battle.

3) 98th Pennsylvania: They moved all over Pleasant Valley. Not sure what was really happening there, but there seemed to be a lot of confusion with their commander Darius Couch. I was able to locate Pleasant Valley. Rt. 67 runs right through the Valley. As I drove through the area, I kept wondering if I was at the same location that my great great grandfather, Peter Stroup, was at 146 1/2 years ago.

Overall, I had a great day and can't wait to head back down!