[Graycliff]

We're the trees there 100 yrs ago?

Reason i ask.
My wife and i toured the Vicksburg battle field, i was amazed at the amount of trees and underbrush there was. When we got back i ask my cousin ( he teaches history at the local university ) how in the hell they were able to even see to fight, due to the trees and underbrush.
He brought out some very old pictures and drawings of the battlefield. I was amazed at what i saw, there were no trees, all the trees had been cut down for defensive purposes, fuel for fires, wood for bunkers and lining trench's, everything was gone. They had taken that battlefield down to bare earth.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying the trees at Gettysburg should be cut down. Mine was just an observation from the Vicksburg battle field.

[Old Lady]

Some of the trees cut down yesterday at Devil's Den at Gettysburg were over 100 year olds -- I sat and counted rings on the stumps. These trees were there when the veterans came back to dedicate monuments and attend reunions.

The park service has also cut down some "witness trees", trees present during the battle, but they will deny it.

(1) Near the peach orchard (2nd day of the battle), behind the (foundation) ruins of the Wentz house, was a massive old shade tree that was easily several hundred years old. We heard from a friend who works within the park service that it was a "mistake" to cut down that tree. Now this year the park service planted tiny seedlings for an orchard at the same site. We think maybe the large old tree was cut down because its shade would have prevented the seedlings from growing.

(2) In the swale behind the Cordori house (on the scene of Pickett's Charge), most of the trees were cut down last year. Environmentalists took core samples and counted tree rings and said some of the trees were growing there at the time of the battle.

[JG52blackman]

I and my wife also visited the Vicksburg battlefield last May and I came to the same conclusion.

I think removing the trees and just having grass would increase the educational and historical value of the place because it would allow a much more accurate view of the way it was and therefore an appreciation of how exposed the Union attackers were to the Confederate defenders when they tried to make assaults as opposed to just waiting and starving them out. As it was I just had to imagine how it might have looked like without the trees and brush. I am sure there is no money available for tree and underbrush removal but I'll bet they could eventually get it done just by asking area Boy Scout troops to do it as a service project.

[johnb838]

Isn't Vicksburg the battle they portrayed at the beginning of Cold Mountain where the damn yanks tunneled under the Glorious Southron Defenders' lines like a bunch of damned palestinians and blew them up, then lost the battle by getting stuck in the hole?

If so there were a heck of a lot of timbers required for those trenches I would imagine.