Oh, and Burnside bridge is now totally blocked off.
If you feel like it, you can jump a barricade fence and slog through the woods and thickets to get to it.
On a high school field trip, we got to get off the bus and wander around it.
*Or* you can sit in your car in a nattily ‘scaped parking lot on the hill above it and sort of glimpse it in the distance.
Bastards.
Antietam is pretty much as it has been for the 40 years I've been going. The biggest change is that the Park Service has now acquired the Mumma and Roulette farms, which used to be privately held. (The Park Service had an easement, but no trespassing). The fields on the approach to Bloody Lane are now walkable. Bloody Lane itself has been a pleasant, grassy stroll for decades; it has not been a muddy, rutted wagon road since the local farmers got trucks and stuck to the paved roads.
The Bloody Lane watchtower and parking lot have been there forever, but Bloody Lane is entirely walkable. I imagine that the Park Service would prefer that folks not scramble up and down the sides, so as to reduce erosion, but I've never seen that as an issue. (Similarly, climbing on the remains of 150 year old earthworks at other battlefields is discouraged.) Burnsides Bridge is fully accessible, and you don't have to bushwhack through anything to get to it. There is a small parking lot at the top of the hill, and you walk down, and there is a small pullover at the bottom of the hill, and you walk along the creek to the bridge.
No, the road doesn't cross the bridge any more. It has never done so in the years I've been acquainted with the park; perhaps it still did in your youth.
I'm not aware of any confederate memorials being removed. There never were many at Antietam; the confederates in general didn't put up nearly as many memorials as did the Yanks, and Antietam is both a northern battlefield and a confederate defeat. I'm straining to think of any confederate monuments on the battlefield; I'm certainly not aware of any that have been removed.
Yes, the park is laid out for a driving tour. That has been the case since long before my time. It's your choice whether you want to get out of your call and walk, or drive.
Most of the modern houses along Harpers Ferry Road up along Sharpsburg Ridge are now owned by the park under life tenancies held by the current occupants; as these folks pass away, those houses will disappear, and the visual integrity of the western boundary will be much enhanced. Nicodemus Heights remains in private hands with park easements. That is fenced off, and one can only get up there by special arrangement. I'd love to see public access worked out, but that's a future question. The big threat is potential development leaping South Mountain and spawling into the viewshed up the valley. I hope that can be averted.
So what's your beef? Are you reacting to the text of the film in the visitors center? As I mentioned before, I've not sat through that for many, many years, so perhaps there's been a PC intrusion there. I don't see that much else has changed at Antietam, except for the better.
This in particular is what grabbed my attention. Are you complaining that you can't drive directly to the bridge? That's an odd comment from someone who was grumbling about parking lots and people not getting out of their cars.
It's a very short walk from the current parking areas to the bridge. If cars could get up to the bridge, the bridge itself would be sitting in the middle of a parking lot and the visual appeal of the site would be sadly degraded.