The National Park Service at Gettysburg received some good news recently. First, they are acquiring a parcel of land that has recently come up for sale. The farmland is in a significant area of the battlefield where General Longstreet's Confederate forces marched west of the Emmitsburg Road. The land came up for sale at the end of last year, but the asking price was far more than the Park Service could afford. So the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) came to the rescue, holding fundraisers to acquire the requested amount. The CWPT has put a bid on the property, and intends to donate the land to the NPS.
The second piece of good news is that it looks like gambling won't be coming into Gettysburg. After several years of battles, a coalition of state and national preservation groups turned down a proposal by businessman David LeVan, opposing his request to open a casino only one-half mile from the National Park. The reason cited was "longstanding commitment to ensuring that singular and significant historic sites like the Gettysburg Battlefield are treated with the respect and consideration they deserve."
Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said, "Some places are just too important to be treated with anything less than the greatest respect, and Gettysburg is one of those places. Anyone who has visited the battlefield in recent years can attest to the fact that commercial development is threatening the visitor experience at Gettysburg, and this proposed casino would greatly exacerbate the problem. A new casino located so close to this sacred soil is simply unacceptable." Amen to that!
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You're right, Private,this is good news. I'm afraid left to their own devices, some in business would put an amusement park ride on top of Little Round Top (yeah, I know there was an amusement park out that way in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but as the peasant said in "Monty Python's Holy Grail," "I...I got better.").
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