Esteemed members: I am a newspaper reporter living and working in the Gettysburg area since 1985. I currenty work for the Evening Sun in Hanover, a town 15 miles east of Gettysburg. I work out of my home five miles south of Gettysburg off the Emmitsburg Rd.

In 1993, I was approached by the Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg to write a series of articles for their newsletter. I was approached because much of my writing as a newspaper reporter had been on the effects of growth on the county.

The articles appeared under my byline and, incidentally, with the approval of my editor. An abbreviated form of the series appeared in The Evening Sun some time later.

With the permission of the Lawrences and the FNPG, here is the second of the five newsletter articles. Naturally, over the passage of time, some of this information has become outdated.

Yours,
Terry W. Burger
Gettysburg: 11/27/97

1/14/94:

The first cut goes the deepest

If any one event could be said to have galvanized the passions of historic preservationists concerning Gettysburg, that event would almost certainly have to be the Railroad Cut.

In January of 1991, bulldozers showed up at the spot where Western Maryland Railroad tracks sliced through 150 yards of Oak Ridge, where some of the most important of the fighting occurred on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The cut was there during the time of the battle; the tracks, however, were not laid until later.

Most galling to battlefield purists and others was the fact that the land being reshaped by bulldozers had until recently been public property, under the aegis of the National Park Service and provided for in the Boundary Act legislation signed into law the previous August.

Most of that seven-acre parcel has now been leased over to the Gettysburg Railroad, which moved approximately 3,600 feet of track, excavating away what some historians part of an area that some historians said was significant to the battle.

The defense was made that the issue of the land swap was talked about during a series of five public meetings held for the NPS Boundary Study, the document on which the new boundary legislation was based. The study was released in August of 1988, two years before the legislation became law.

Indeed, the land swap is to be found in the boundary study document, which was readily available by request from the NPS. On pages 36 and 37 of the 1988 draft report to Congress regarding proposed changes to the park boundaries, the railroad project was listed as one of eight possible deletions from the park.

"A possible re-routing of 3,600 feet of the Gettysburg Railroad line from its current location on the Gettysburg College campus to one along the park/college boundary would require minor park boundary alterations. This change would provide benefits for the college and would not have an adverse impact on known historic resources," the entry reads.

The matter was discussed during a September 14, 1988 boundary study workshop help in Gettysburg. The following is from a partial transcript of a tape made of the proceedings by George Shealer, a Licensed Battlefield Guide. The exchange is between Gettysburg resident James Cole, Shealer and an unidentified person, and Jonathan L. Doherty, a planner with the NPS's Division of Park and Resource Planning, Mid Atlantic Region in Philadelphia. Doherty has left the NPS and now works as a consultant.

Cole: "Where will the railroad tracks be re-routed at Gettysburg College?

Doherty: "....to just within the existing park and continue up here, and essentially this would help facilitate that in a way that involves the minimal amount of park land that is not critical for interpretation."

Cole: "What is being done to the railroad, is it being moved immediately to the side?"

Doherty: "It's being moved, it would potentially be moved approximately a little less than a quarter of a mile to the west. And...we would not be, that's not our action, it's a private action that's being taken by (inaudible) and the College."

Shealer: "Yeah, but that sounds like you're taking it off the college land and putting it on government land."

Doherty: "Well, it's actually..."

Shealer: "You're trading government land, you're giving the college land, in other words."

Doherty: "It's essentially right along the park boundary. There's a small 50-foot-wide section in that area."

Shealer: "Of government land."

Unidentified: "Jonathan, would this affect the park adversely?"

Doherty: "Uh, no. We would tie the construction in with an archaeological investigation that there are no known disadvantages."

Shealer: "The base of Oak Ridge, in other words?"

Doherty: "...Yes."

Shealer: "Basically the base of Oak Ridge."

The non-profit Gettysburg Battlefield Protection Association filed a lawsuit in federal court 10 months after the ridge was altered, claiming the NPS, college, and railroad violated the public trust and a number of federal, state and local laws in the course of the land-swap.

The lawsuit sought repairs to the ridge area and punitive damages that could have totalled up to $12 million.

In July of 1992, Judge Sylvia Rambo of the United States Middle District Court in Harrisburg dismissed the lawsuit.

Still, the matter of the railroad cut refused to go away. In August of 1993, a little more than a year after the GBPA suit was dismissed, a Congressional subcommittee began to look into the deal.

Sandy Harris, who works with the House Subcommittee on Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, said early in December that the committee for which she works falls under the umbrella of the House Government Operations Committee, which has oversight of every agency of government.

"Our subcommittee has oversight of eight agencies, including the Interior Department, which includes the National Park Service," she said.

Harris said she visited Gettysburg Oct. 30 with Congressman Mike Synar (D-OK), who chairs the subcommittee.

Harris said the subcommittee was urged to look into the swap, but said she was not at liberty to divulge from whom that urging came.

"We're very protective of our sources," Harris said. "People very concerned about it, people outside the park, are still mad as hell that it could have been allowed to happen."

Contacted at the time the story about the Congressional subcommittee broke in a Hanover, Pa. newspaper, Gettysburg College spokesman William T. Walker said the school's position has remained unchanged:

"We've always said we felt we've done the right thing," Walker said. "If these folks take an impartial and fair look at this thing we're hopeful they'll conclude the same thing."

Harris is taking a "wait and see" attitude.

"In this case we're talking about destruction of what had been park land, and whether or not that park land had historical significance and should have been exchanged in the first place. We have serious questions about whether or not, in fact, everyone knew what was going to happen as the result of this land exchange, whether or not the public was adequately notified and the right people in the Interior Department and Congress, and whether all the proper procedures were followed."

Dr. Walter Powell, an officer in the GBPA, said he was happy Synar's committee had become involved.

"Our hope all along was this whole matter would be considered by Congress," he said."This is the first serious effort on the part of the people in the capitol to look into the matter."