Gettysburg National Cemetery: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Gettysburg National Cemetery

Auwaerter, John

The Gettysburg National Cemetery is part of Gettysburg National Military Park, located in south central Pennsylvania roughly halfway between and west of Harrisburg and Baltimore. The 5,989-acre park is the site of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863, a Union victory that ended General Robert E. Lee’s second and most ambitious invasion of the North and ultimately a turning point in the Civil War. Known also by its original name, Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Gettysburg National Cemetery is a historic designed landscape that commemorates the thousands of U.S. military personnel interred on its grounds. The 22-acre cemetery is interpreted primarily for its historic association with the Civil War and President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, given at the dedication of the unfinished cemetery on November 19, 1863. The landscape of Gettysburg National Cemetery has two distinct components: the original cemetery (Soldiers’ National Cemetery), and the cemetery annex. The original 17-acre cemetery, opened for burials in 1863 was designed by William Saunders in 1863 and completed in large part by 1869. It is informal in overall character with winding drives and naturalistic groupings of trees in the style of English landscape gardens, except in the central Civil War burial area that has a geometric and uniform character. The 5-acre annex adjoins the north side of the original cemetery and was developed beginning in 1968 according to plans by Park Service landscape architect Glen Caldaro and completed by JWF Architects of Harrisburg in 1993. The lawn-style cemetery features a semi-circular burial area and a central monument. While the design of the annex has no association with the National Cemetery System, it does contain typical features such as an enclosure and flagstaff, as well as government-issued grave markers. Gettysburg National Cemetery today (2019) contains 5,217 occupied gravesites, most with a single body and some with multiple remains. The cemetery was officially closed in 1972, but still accepts interment of veterans and eligible dependents in reserved gravesites. The original central semi-circular burial area contains 3,620 graves, primarily Civil War reinterments from the battlefields, most with a single body; 979 graves have remains not identified by name or state, and some contain multiple remains. The added sections in the outlying areas of the original cemetery (Sections I-VIII) contain 1,596 graves of casualties and veterans dating back to the Spanish-American War (1898). The cemetery annex contains 2,177 graves of casualties and veterans associated with World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Dependents (close family members) are interred in many of the post-Civil War graves.

Gettysburg National Cemetery: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Gettysburg National Cemetery

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