HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil War

99th PA Moore(w) / Fritz

Cumberland Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

99th Pennsylvania Infantry Fought on this line in the afternoon of July 2nd.

The Story

On the afternoon of July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 99th Pennsylvania Infantry held this ground on the Union left, where the fighting swirled around Devil's Den and the rocky slopes below Little Round Top. As Confederate assaults threatened to turn the army's flank, regiments like the 99th fought desperately to keep the high ground in Federal hands. This granite monument, one of hundreds placed across the battlefield by veterans and their states, marks the line where these Pennsylvanians stood.

Why it matters

Gettysburg was the war's bloodiest battle and its turning point, and the second-day fight for the Union left was among its most decisive moments. Markers like this one let visitors trace the exact ground where individual regiments bled to preserve the Union.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had been grinding on for more than two years, and the fighting had crept steadily northward. When Confederate forces pushed into southern Pennsylvania, the war arrived in a place it had never been before: the quiet farm country of Adams County, where wheat fields, orchards, and low rocky ridges surrounded the crossroads town of Gettysburg.

The armies collided here almost by accident, drawn together by the web of roads that met at the town. Over three days in early July, hundreds of thousands of men fought across these fields, and ordinary Pennsylvania farmland became some of the most fought-over ground in American history.

The men of the 99th Pennsylvania were, in a sense, defending their own state. Pennsylvania regiments carried a particular weight at Gettysburg, standing on home soil against an army that had marched into their commonwealth. The line marked by this monument is a small piece of that vast, terrible landscape.

People & events

On the afternoon of July 2, 1863 — the battle's second day — the Union left flank became the scene of some of the most desperate fighting of the entire war. Confederate assaults rolled against the southern end of the Federal line, and regiment after regiment was fed into the fight to keep the high ground from being lost.

The 99th Pennsylvania Infantry took its place on this line during those hours. The inscription records the fact plainly: these men fought here, that afternoon, on this ground. Behind that simple sentence lies the reality of close-range combat among boulders and broken slopes, where the outcome could turn on whether a single regiment held or gave way.

Markers like this one were placed by the veterans themselves and by their home states in the decades after the war. Men who had survived came back to the field, walked the ground again, and set stone where memory told them they had stood — so that the exact line would not be lost when they were gone.

Its place in the American story

Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought on American soil and is widely remembered as the turning point of the Civil War. After three days, the Confederate invasion of the North was thrown back, and the army that had seemed unstoppable never again mounted so ambitious a campaign.

The second-day struggle for the Union left was central to that outcome. Had the flank been turned, the entire Federal position might have unraveled. The stand made by regiments across this end of the field — men like the Pennsylvanians honored here — helped ensure it was not.

That is why the battlefield is covered with monuments to individual regiments rather than a single grand memorial. Each stone insists that the great national result rested on particular men holding particular ground, and invites you to trace the battle not as an abstraction but as a series of very human stands.

If you visit

This marker sits within the Gettysburg battlefield landscape in Cumberland Township, amid the rocky, wooded terrain of the army's left flank. Take a moment to look at the ground itself — the boulders, the slopes, the sightlines — and imagine trying to hold or take it under fire.

The monument is one of hundreds scattered across the field, and part of the pleasure of a visit here is following them from one regiment's line to the next, letting the stones map out how the fighting flowed. Reading them in sequence turns a walk into a kind of narrated tour.

Give yourself time and, if you can, quiet. Early morning or late afternoon light softens the field and thins the crowds, and it is easier then to feel the weight of what happened on a single summer afternoon on this exact line.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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  • · Battle of Gettysburg

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