[dragnet2]

If you want realism, tear up the paved roads, the public bathrooms, stop cutting the grass, get rid of the visitor center, and get rid of the park service, because they weren't there in 1863.

Great post.

[Old Lady]

Thanks for your post. Last comments before I sign off:

The park service wants people to “see what the soldiers saw” and so they are chopping down thousands of trees so you can have the same sight lines.

My objections:

(1) they are ignoring the memorial aspect of the battlefield. They are removing trees behind monuments and exposing junk, telephone lines, and the ugly backs of stores (where you have no sight line because modern buildings or construction on private property block it). I am appalled at what they are doing on Culp’s Hill.

(2) In the 1980’s it was park policy to allow a buffer of trees to grow up between the town and the battlefield, screening out modern construction. They planted and solicited the donation of thousands of trees. Now they are cutting all these trees down. What did all of this cost?

(3) The waterways running through the battlefield end up in the Chesapeake Bay, which has a silt problem. Scientists have worked for years to save the fish etc in the Bay. The Cheaspeake Bay Foundation calls the park service “absolutely crazy” for cutting down thousands of trees. It will add silt to the waterways and cause all kinds of damage. The park service says it is doing plantings of grasses etc, to counteract this, but what they have done is minimal.