The New Gettysburg Visitor Center

I am a frequent visitor to Gettsyburg, PA, since I have family that lives there. I've seen almost every site and gone on almost every tour, so it was with a fairly high level of anticipation that I checked out the new visitor center and museum that recently opened. I give it a big thumbs up.

The previous visitor center had a couple of problems--it was small and was sitting on an important spot in the battle. It was convenient--you could walk from there to the National Cemetery, where Lincoln made the Gettsyburg Address, or to the "High Water Mark," the angle in the stone wall where what was left of Pickett's Charge met the Union line. But in the interest of making the battlefield look exactly as it did for those three days in July in 1863, and to expand the size of the facility for more displays and amenities, it had to be moved.

The site is a bit further down the Baltimore Pike, on a spot of ground that saw no action during the battle. It is built with the kind of stone that fits in with many houses in the area, while the building that will house the Cyclorama painting, which is being restored (and is not yet open to the public) has the look of a large barn. What is most striking upon entering, in addition to the expanded size, is that the museum portion has something of a theme. It is a museum dedicated to the entire war, with of course a more than generous portion devoted to Gettysburg. When you enter you learn about the causes of the war (I'm glad to see that the focus here is on slavery--none of this revisionist nonsense from Southern sympathizers) and as you make your way through the narrative of the war unfolds. There are displays on almost everything--from weapons to surgery to camp life (soldiers routinely threw away dice and cards before a battle, lest they be found on them if they were to die, giving them a bad name) to slavery to what the battle did to the town. Every section has a short film, with each day of the Gettsyburg battle getting its own. This replaces the "electric map" of the old center, which was an interesting way to imagine the battle but profoundly from a distant technology.

The bookstore is now about three times the size of the old one, with more t-shirts and caps than you can shake a stick at, but also a comprehensive selection of books about the battle, the personalities, and the war in general. There are a lot of interactive displays scattered throughout the museum, which are also available in a resource center. You can look up any brigade that fought in the war and learn where they were and what the casualties were, as well as finding any of the thousands of monuments. There's also a cafeteria, with selections from the era, such as peanut soup and hardtack, or a leg of lamb.

If you've been thinking about going to Gettysburg it's a great time to go. The Cyclorama will open in the fall. The museum, if given careful consideration, can easily take two hours, and of course that doesn't include a tour of the actual battlefield itself, which can take another two-to-three hours (or more).