Civil War action at Turner’s and Fox’s Gaps on South Mountain will be remembered on-site on Saturday and Sunday (8-9 September) and on the actual anniversary, Friday the 14th. Events at the South Mountain Battlefield and Washington Monument parks, brought to you by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), will include talks, demonstrations and walking tours.
See more about the battle action on South Mountain from DNR, which includes mention of Crampton’s Gap – a battle apparently neglected among these anniversary events. See the detailed schedule and get more information from the DNR.
Just announced is the new dedicated website [link updated 2020] for the Antietam National Battlefield licensed tour guides. Nicely executed by IconGraphics of Hagerstown, the basic site is expected to grow as each guide gets a page of their own.
The current content is basic but helpful. Included are points of contact and typical costs to help you arrange your own custom tour.
Thanks to Tom Shay for the heads-up on TalkAntietam.
Save Historic Antietam Foundation (SHAF) has a shiny new home on the web. I’ll have more time later to talk about the fine folks at SHAF, the great work they are doing and have done.
In a joint venture with the SHAF Board of Directors I have had a part in creating and improving the site. I hope they’ll keep me on to add new online services and features, too. I’ll plan to post more about this exciting web development project as time permits.
Do go have a look, won’t you? And get involved in this worthy cause.
In the spirit of community with my fellow bloggers, I’ve taken the Which American Civil War General are you?quiz. I score as a 65% match for William T Sherman.
W.T. Sherman, death mask (from the Hutton Collection at Princeton)
I don’t really see it, myself. Maybe it was the question about “… a little bit crazy”?
Apparently I’m also part Longstreet (45% match), Lee (45%) and McClellan (35%).
Danger looms as large scale electric power transmission may soon impinge on the the Antietam battlefield, South Mountain, and many other historic and culturally significant sites.
Its specific route has not been determined, but it would likely cut through environmentally sensitive and historically significant terrain, which includes the Potomac and Kanawha rivers, the scenic Allegheny Highlands and the Civil War battlefields at Antietam and South Mountain…
… Along the route would be hundreds of 125-foot towers with cables running in between on a corridor estimated at about 200 feet wide, said Allen Staggers, a spokesman for Allegheny Energy.
(photo from National Trust for Historic Preservation)
Keep your eyes on this one. It looks to be on a fast track for implementation with minimum oversight. It is brought to you by to the US Department of Energy’s National Interest Electric Transmission (NIET) program and provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (pdf).
The National Trust for Historic Preservation includes this proposed mid-Atlantic transmission corridor on it’s annual list of most endangered historic places, and hosts a lovely US Park Service map (pdf) of the interrelations between the NIET zones and heritage areas in the Eastern US.
See also an energy industry brief (pdf) on transmission corridors and US federal policy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) implementation of the Energy Policy Act, and new legislation to rein in the NEIT program.
