Like a long-delayed shot from the huge artillery barrage that shook the ground at Gettysburg exactly 137 years earlier to the day, a few pounds of explosive are scheduled to knock the 307-foot National Tower out of the sky at 5 p.m. on July 3.
With plans for a strict safety perimeter and a temporary stoppage of traffic on adjacent roads, the battlefield park is bracing to handle a possible flood of implosion-watchers on what is already one of the busiest days of the year.
"This will be a very significant day," said park spokesman Katie Lawhon. "This is going to be a tremendous step forward in restoring the battlefield."
Moving swiftly in the courts, the National Park Service (NPS) won possession in mid-June of the commercial observation tower, which has loomed over the battlefield for more than a quarter-century. Perhaps no man-made intrusion on a historic or natural landscape anywhere in America has generated more national attention and criticism.
"It's an abomination," said Dick Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Trust has publicly struggled against the tower for years.
"It's very hard to interpret the battle with that there," Moe said. "It deserves to be gone."
The scheduled 5 p.m. demolition is designed to enable battlefield visitors to attend park tours during the day and then watch the tower come down. July 1-3 draws the biggest attendance of the year, with between 8000 and 10,000 people entering the visitor center. The annual reenactment will be winding up after re-creating Pickett's Charge earlier in the afternoon.
Just as the tower has soared above much of the surrounding countryside since its erection in 1974, viewing its demise will be possible from any number of spots near and far, Lawhon said. In fact, "It might be better at a distance."
Although the choice of the final day of the battle anniversary was clearly intended to make a statement, "We're not creating an event that we're bringing thousands of people to," Lawhon said. At presstime it was uncertain whether Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt would attend. Babbitt vowed last year to take down the tower "on my watch."
The key player in the day's drama is Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Md. The 52-year-old family company is donating the $1 million cost of demolishing the tower and carting off the twisted heap of galvanized steel.
While the openwork structure of the tower can't match the challenge of razing the Seattle Kingdome earlier this year, or the remains of the federal building in Oklahoma City five years ago (both CDI projects), "It's a very big job from an emotional standpoint," said CDI spokesman Stacey Loizeaux.
In fact, CDI began contemplating "felling" the tower as long ago as 1991, Loizeaux said, when its demise began to be seriously considered. The tower and its 6.5-acre site were brought within the park boundary by congressional action in 1990.
"We've been looking at this job for a long, long time," Loizeaux said. "We're war buffs. I remember my parents taking me to the park when I was in second grade. I'm almost embarrassed because the tower is such an eyesore compared to the beauty of the park. I'm a believer in preserving the battlefields."
At presstime in mid-June, Loizeaux said the exact number of pounds of explosive was uncertain until the park took possession of the tower and CDI had a look. She estimated that a crew of three would take about three days to prepare the structure, although the logistics of securing the site would be far more time-consuming.
The company will employ RDX, a liquid explosive designed by NASA to sever booster rockets from the Space Shuttle. It is poured into conical-shaped copper sheathing, hardened, and cut into appropriate pieces.
Detonating cord will trigger the RDX, with explosions possibly staggered by nine-millisecond gaps to reduce the impact of vibration on neighboring properties. Only a thunderstorm, bringing electricity into the air, or thick fog, which would hamper efforts to keep people clear of the tower, would delay the detonation.
The park was planning to meet with local officials, neighboring businesses and landowners to "walk them through" the demolition process, Lawhon said.
In the days preceding the blast, a security fence will keep the public from the immediate area.
On July 3 a security force will close the area between Taneytown Road and the Baltimore Pike, including National and Evergreen cemeteries, as far south as Hunt Avenue. The two roads will be closed to traffic for about a half-hour.
Bolstering the park's own security force will be a special NPS "team" that handles special events, Lawhon said, plus the volunteer Park Watch.
In gaining control of the tower, NPS leaped its last legal hurdle June 5, when U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo ordered that possession be handed over to the United States on or before June 15.
The compelling factor in granting NPS immediate possession, said Rambo, was the fact that CDI's offer was made contingent on bringing the tower down on July 3.
"We were aware of the anniversary of the battle," Loizeaux explained. "We blocked it out on our schedule board." With other jobs coming in, July 3 eventually became "the only time a crew was available."
In view of the $1 million savings to the taxpayer, Rambo wrote in her three-page decision, "the Government has a substantial interest in obtaining possession of the Tower as soon as possible in order to permit adequate time for the preparations necessary for the demolition by that date."
Rambo acknowledged that tower owner Thomas Ottenstein, of Overview Limited Partnership, "stands to lose a considerable amount of revenue," and his employees will be out of jobs.
But since the property has been the focus of condemnation proceedings since last December, the judge said, "it is not a question of whether Overview will lose revenue, but when."
As for the employees, the park has agreed to offer them jobs such as seasonal grounds maintenance, crowd control or manning the information desk.
Two cellular telephone companies rent space on the tower. Their loss will be "not insubstantial," Rambo said, but their forced departure came as "certainly no surprise."
CDI is donating the value of the demolition to the nonprofit Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg. Friends Executive Director Vickey Monrean said the $1 million gift was the largest single corporate contribution to date at the battlefield, outpacing a $65,000 contribution from Columbia Gas to restore the Peace Light.
"Since the tower can be seen from every part of the battlefield, CDI will, in one donation, be improving the viewshed of the entire battlefield," Monrean said. "We are glad to be a part of such a wonderful and generous contribution."
The Friends were planning to erect a tent along the Baltimore Pike for viewing by donors and by residents of the immediate area who will be forced to leave their homes.
Loizeaux said the decision by CDI President Mark Loizeaux, her father, and Vice President Douglas Loizeaux, her uncle, to donate the service was made partly for public-relations reasons.
But also the gift "goes to our personal feelings," Loizeaux said. "As a family company, we saw an interesting opportunity to give something back, and have it coincide with a really important date at the park."
At presstime Greystone Communications of Los Angeles, the film company that created "Civil War Journal," was exploring with CDI creating a video of the implosion for possible airing on the History Channel. Proceeds from retail sales of the video would be donated to the Friends, Loizeaux said.
With the tower's days numbered, a desire to see it gone appeared nearly universal. Lawhon noted that Congress's action in 1990 drawing the structure within the park boundary amounted to a mandate to buy it and raze it. The tower has been for sale "for years," she noted.
An earlier attempt by the park to launch a private fund drive to buy the tower at an appraised price of $6.6 million fell through. A recent appraisal set the value at $3 million.
A decision to file in May for immediate possession was prompted by concern that the condemnation proceedings could take as long as two years. The court case will continue in order to determine the price that the owners will be paid.
Lawhon said ultimately the tower site will be returned to its wartime appearance. Other infrastructure to be removed once the tower is gone includes a souvenir shop, an asphalt parking lot, two asphalt drives, and flagpoles. Lawhon had "no idea" when the site would be fully restored.
CDI was founded by Loizeaux's grandparents, Jack and Freddie Loizeaux. In 1947 Jack Loizeaux was "the first person to use explosives to bring down a man-made structure," according to his granddaughter, who described him as the "pioneer" of implosion technology.
CDI works all over the world, razing an average of 1.5 buildings a week year-round. Among the 7000 buildings, bridges and other structures that they have blown up they are credited with demolishing the tallest and largest building ever imploded, the J.L. Hudson Department Store in Detroit, 439 feet high and 2.2 million square feet.
