OK Everybody...Hold on one minute...While the National Park service wants to cut down viable living trees for the sake of "realism", then perhaps they should get rid of all those cannons lying all over the park stamped with the year 1864 on the end of their barrels. The markings on cannon barrels give the year of manufacture and the iron works or foundry marks where they were made...These particular cannons were not around in 1863 either...Check it out the next time you are in the park.
Some things you just can't control. There are not enough cannons to go around now days. They found out early on that using wooden gun carriages did not last very long and switched to cast concrete. The best they can do with a gun emplacement is to put a few representative guns in the original positions. Sometimes size does matter and they at least attempt to get one of similar size to the original and wartime vintage. In short there are only enough Rodmans, howitzers, and columbiads to go around. And no taxpayer wants to pay for the govt. to start manufacturing columbiads again. A full set up for a reproduction Bronze Napoleon costs around 30k. Multiply that by a thousand and you are talking serious money. lol
That's a good one about the cannons.
Here's an even better one:
For years the park hired some people (I don't know how many) to maintain the cannons. I was told that they received minimum wage or thereabouts. They did a good job and the cannons were never in a state of utter deterioration.
The park let those employees go. Now many of the cannons are in terrible shape. I heard that now the park ships the cannons out to be maintained at a very high cost, thousands more than if they'd kept these people on the job.
The surrounding community of Gettysburg does not have many jobs, and a job with the national park, even low-paying, is better than no job at all.
When you walk the battlefield daily, you pick up scuttlebutt like this.
sounds good to me