Dwight D. Eisenhower
Gettysburg, Adams County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The future President of the U.S., General of the Army, and Supreme Commander in Europe in WWII lived in this house with his wife Mamie and infant son Icky in the spring and summer of 1918. An Army captain, he was then commanding Camp Colt at Gettysburg.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the spring and summer of 1918, a young Army captain named Dwight D. Eisenhower lived in this Gettysburg house with his wife Mamie and their infant son while commanding nearby Camp Colt. There he trained American soldiers in the new weapon of the First World War, the tank, on the very fields where the great Civil War battle had been fought. Decades later he would return to Gettysburg as a five-star general, Supreme Commander in Europe, and President of the United States.
Why it matters
The marker captures Eisenhower at the outset of a career that would carry him to the command of Allied forces in World War II and the White House, rooting his lifelong bond with Gettysburg in his first field command.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the spring of 1918, America was a year into the First World War, and the whole country had been remade to fight it. Young men were drafted and drilled at hastily built camps; factories retooled for war; and the U.S. Army, small and unprepared in 1917, was racing to become a modern fighting force almost overnight.
Gettysburg in those months was a study in contrasts. The rolling fields south of town were the most famous battleground in the nation, already dotted with monuments to the men who fought there in 1863. Now, half a century later, those same fields hummed again with soldiers, tents, and the noise of a brand-new machine of war.
The war had introduced a weapon almost no American soldier had ever seen: the tank. Born in the trenches of Europe, it was still experimental, unreliable, and barely understood. The Army needed a place to train men for it, and a captain to run that place — and it found both at Gettysburg.
People & events
The captain was Dwight D. Eisenhower, then in his late twenties and years away from fame. He had been commissioned out of West Point and, to his lasting frustration, kept being handed training jobs stateside instead of a combat command overseas. In 1918 he was given Camp Colt, the Army's tank training center, laid out on the Gettysburg battlefield itself.
He rented this house in town and moved his young family in for the spring and summer: his wife, Mamie, and their infant first son, nicknamed "Icky." It was an ordinary domestic life — a couple in their twenties with a baby — set against the extraordinary backdrop of a nation at war and a future no one could have guessed.
At Camp Colt, Eisenhower organized and drilled thousands of men in the use of the tank, often improvising because the tanks themselves were in short supply. It was demanding, unglamorous work. But learning to build and lead a large organization from scratch was exactly the schooling that would matter most a quarter-century later.
Its place in the American story
The marker catches a great American life at its very beginning. The captain training tank crews on a Civil War battlefield would become, in the next war, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe — the man who oversaw the D-Day landings — and then a five-star General of the Army and a two-term President of the United States.
That arc is why this modest house matters. It is a reminder that history's turning-point figures start out as ordinary young people doing hard, obscure jobs, and that the skills Eisenhower honed here — organizing, teaching, leading large numbers of men under pressure — were the same ones the free world would lean on in 1944.
Gettysburg's hold on Eisenhower never let go. The place drew him back across his life, and in time he made his home nearby — the ground where the country's past and one of its most consequential futures quietly overlapped.
If you visit
Stand in front of this house and let the layers settle over you. In one direction lie the fields where the Union and Confederate armies collided in 1863; on that same ground, in 1918, a young officer prepared a new generation of soldiers for a very different kind of war.
Gettysburg rewards this kind of double vision. Most visitors come for the great battle, and you should absolutely walk that ground — but keep an eye out for the town's quieter twentieth-century story, the one where a future president pushed a stroller down these streets between long days at camp.
It makes for a rich, unhurried road-trip stop: the monuments and battle lines of the national park, and then the human-scale reminder that the same landscape shaped a young Eisenhower long before the world knew his name. Give yourself time to move between the two, and the place tells a much bigger story than any single date can hold.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Ticket to the Past - Unforgettable Journeys0.2 mi away · 35 Carlisle Street, Gettysburg, PA
- The David Wills House Museum0.2 mi away · 8 Lincoln Square, Gettysburg, PA
- Gettysburg Museum of History0.4 mi away · 219 Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, PA
- Shriver House Museum0.5 mi away · 309 Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, PA
- Seminary Ridge Museum, Gettysburg0.6 mi away · 61 Seminary Ridge Avenue, Gettysburg
- Beyond the Battle Museum0.6 mi away · 625 Biglerville Road, Gettysburg, PA
Attractions
- John Eisenhower Bridge3.1 mi away · Waterworks Road
- Sachs Covered Bridge3.4 mi away
- Sachs Covered Bridge3.4 mi away · Waterworks Road, Gettysburg, PA
Food & drink
- CJ's Takeout & Late Nite Bites0.1 mi away · 150 Carlisle Street, Gettysburg, PA
- Tacos Monarca0.1 mi away · 11 West Railroad Street, Gettysburg, PA
- Lincoln Diner0.1 mi away · 32 Carlisle Street, Gettysburg, PA
- The Hideout0.2 mi away · 45 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, PA
- The Gettysburger Co.0.2 mi away · 35 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, PA
- food 1010.2 mi away · 101 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, PA
Places to stay
- The Union Hotel0.2 mi away · 27 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, PA
- Glatfelter Lodge0.2 mi away · PA
- Gettysburg Hotel0.2 mi away · 1 Lincoln Square, Gettysburg, PA
- The Inn at Lincoln Square0.2 mi away · 12 Lincoln Square, Gettysburg, PA
- The LaVerne Private Guesthouse0.3 mi away · 27 York Street, Gettysburg, PA
- The Brafferton Inn0.3 mi away · 44 York Street, Gettysburg, PA
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Related people
- · Dwight D. Eisenhower
- · Mamie Eisenhower
Related events
- · Camp Colt tank training (1918)
Themes & tags
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