CWPT Is Raising Funds For Parcel
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — For less than $100,000 the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) can help acquire what spokesman Jim Campi called, “the final piece to restore the landscape on Emmitsburg Road” at Gettysburg Battlefield. CWPT is raising funds to supplement $300,000 that the National Park Service has on hand to buy the last 1.9 acres of the Phillip Snyder Farm. Gettysburg National Military Park spokesperson Katie Lawhon said the parcel, on which two modern brick houses sit, is on Emmitsburg Road where it meets West Confederate Avenue. The historic Snyder farmhouse across the road is part of the park. According to a CWPT press release, the landowners expressed a desire to sell late last year, but the property was appraised well beyond the park’s ability to pay. CWPT acted quickly to protect the tract from further development and put it under contract. Lawhon said the small parcel was listed as high priority for acquisition in the park’s 1993 land protection plan. She says the park boundary includes 5990.30 acres, on which 640.37 acres inside the boundary, including this Snyder tract, are unprotected. In park parlance such tracts are referred to as in-holdings. After the closing, CWPT will sell the parcel to the National Park Service for $300,000, the allocation from Congress. Lawhon says the park will restore the site to agricultural use. Whether the houses are torn down or moved off site will be up to the contractor who wins the bid. The Snyder Farm is half a mile from Little Round Top and due west of Devil’s Den. As guide Tim Smith explains on a video that can be viewed at CWPT’s www.civilwar.org site, the July 2 Confederate line was just west of the 80-acre Snyder farm. After the battle Phillip Snyder tried unsuccessfully to get compensation for the $500 in damage caused by Confederates of Robertson’s and Benning’s Brigades crossing his farm to advance on Devil’s Den. “Virtually everyone who has ever come to Gettysburg, seeking to walk the fields of the Civil War’s greatest battle, has passed by this land,” said CWPT president James Lighthizer in a press release. “Nearly a third of the Union Army marched right by — and likely across — this property as they double-quicked up the Emmitsburg Road into Gettysburg on July 1, 1863,” he said. “It is not often – if ever – that we who care about saving America’s Civil War battlefields get the opportunity to save something so important.” According to the CWPT the National Parks Conservation Association successfully lobbied Congress for Gettysburg to receive $2.215 million in FY2009 for land acquisition from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That is where the $300,000 came from. The CWPT has worked with the Land Conservancy of Adams County, Conservation Fund, Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association and Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg since 1997 to protect 700 acres at Gettysburg Battlefield. These sites include Daniel Lady Farm, East Cavalry Field, the cavalry action site at Fairfield and in-holding parcels along the Baltimore Pike and Mummasburg Road.
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