Since July 4th, 1863, the Gettysburg battlefield has been changing. The hundreds of thousands of men, horses, wagons, and cannon changed the face of the landscape forever during the three horrific days of battle. After the armies moved on, the fallen were buried, the hospitals closed up, and throngs of tourists began to arrive over the decades.
The millions of tourists, alongside modern industry, construction, roads, restaurants, entertainment, stores, educational institutions, and War Department and National Park Service stewardship have forever altered the hallowed grounds even more. In some places, the men who fought there would no longer even recognize the places that they gave “the last full measure of devotion.”
This book showcases amazing and high-resolution photographs of the battlefield as it was on those hot, bloody, July days of 1863, as well as how it looked to the men who returned to revisit the infamous grounds of their desperate struggle.