Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1993

In January 1776, at Robert Bell's print shop on this ground, the first edition of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" rolled off the press and into the hands of a colonial public still hesitant about breaking from Britain. Written in plain, fiery language, the pamphlet made the case for independence and a republic governed by a written constitution. It spread through the colonies with astonishing speed, selling in the tens of thousands and shifting public opinion just months before the Declaration of Independence.

Mahoning Township, PA · est. 1948

Chartered by both Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1827, the 'Cross-Cut Canal' opened in 1838 to stitch two states' waterways together along the Mahoning River valley. By joining the Beaver Canal below New Castle it created a continuous water route linking Pittsburgh with the booming iron towns of Youngstown and Cleveland. For a generation it carried coal, iron, and produce until the railroad — which later followed the very same line — rendered it obsolete, and the canal fell out of use by 1872.

Washington, PA · est. 1994

On the western Pennsylvania frontier in 1809, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian minister named Thomas Campbell put pen to paper and called for Christians to set aside sectarian division and unite on the plain teachings of scripture. His 'Declaration and Address,' first published at this site, became the founding document of the Disciples of Christ. It grew from the Christian Association of Washington, which Campbell and his followers had organized earlier that same year.

East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1947

Near here once stood "Indiantown," a Native village whose name later attached to a creek, a gap, and a great military reservation. It marked a way-station on the path the Delaware people took to Shamokin as they were pushed north and west from their homeland in the Schuylkill region during the 1700s — one small trace of the displacement that reshaped Pennsylvania's original inhabitants.

Bedford, PA · est. 1951

Built before 1761 at the frontier outpost of Bedford, this log structure served as the Commandant's House—the "King's House"—housing British officers who garrisoned the region until the close of the French and Indian War. In later, more peaceful years it took on new life as the Rising Sun Inn before fire destroyed it in 1885. Its story traces Bedford's evolution from a military strongpoint on a dangerous frontier to a settled crossroads town.

Buffalo Township, PA · est. 1947

This stone bridge carried the National, or Cumberland, Road, the first federally funded highway in the United States. Authorized in 1805 and pushed westward to Wheeling by 1818, the road became the great artery of early national travel. Across spans like this one rolled countless Conestoga wagons and stagecoaches carrying settlers, goods, and mail between the settled East and the growing West.

Middletown, PA · est. 1969

In the years just before the Revolution, the German Lutheran settlers of Middletown raised this church on land granted by town founder George Fisher for the token rent of a single grain of wheat. Its 1769 dedication was led by Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the organizer of Lutheran congregations across the colonies and the acknowledged patriarch of American Lutheranism. The quaint peppercorn rent reflects a common colonial custom for tying a congregation to its benefactor.

Cromwell Township, PA · est. 1947

In the mid-18th century, the Frankstown Path was a vital Native American trading route threading through the Pennsylvania wilderness, traveled by colonial agents like Conrad Weiser on missions of diplomacy and commerce. For reasons now lost to history, Weiser and fellow travelers gave this particular spot the ominous name 'Shadow of Death.' The marker candidly admits the local origin of the name is unknown—a rare and honest acknowledgment of history's gaps.

Honesdale, PA · est. 2021

In the depths of the Great Depression, a Honesdale-raised lyricist named Richard "Dick" Smith turned the ache of a tuberculosis sanatorium in nearby Scranton into one of the season's most enduring songs. Looking back on winters spent in Central Park across from his family's Church Street home, he penned the words to "Winter Wonderland" in 1934. The song was recorded by dozens of artists and became a holiday standard, though Smith died of the disease at just 34, barely after it reached the public.

York, PA · est. 1967

Built in 1860 for Charles Billmeyer, a prosperous manufacturer of railroad cars, this York mansion showcased the confidence and wealth of a booming industrial age. Its hand-painted ceiling and elaborate interior ornament made it a showpiece of high Victorian taste. The house reflects how the railroad boom lifted local industrialists into the ranks of America's new moneyed class.

Cumberland Township, PA

This granite monument stands on the fields south of Gettysburg, where in early July 1863 the Army of the Potomac's Second Corps held the long spine of Cemetery Ridge against Robert E. Lee's invading army. The 106th Pennsylvania Infantry served in the storied Philadelphia Brigade, one of the units that anchored the Union center during the three days of fighting that turned back the Confederacy's deepest thrust into the North. Decades later, Pennsylvania's surviving veterans returned to mark the exact ground their regiments had held, planting stone monuments like this one across the battlefield. The unit designations carved here — brigade, division, and corps — are the veterans' own shorthand for where they stood when the war reached its turning point.

Cumberland Township, PA

Dedicated by the surviving members of the regiment to their fallen comrades, this Ohio monument honors the 107th Ohio Infantry of the Second Brigade, First Division, Eleventh Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, the regiment — largely made up of German-American volunteers — fought on the northern edge of the battlefield, where the division under Barlow and Ames was overwhelmed and driven back into town. The inscription, "Ohio's Token of Gratitude," speaks in the voice of the veterans who returned to mark where their friends had died.

Cumberland Township, PA

The 108th New York Infantry, raised largely around Rochester and known as the 'Rochester Regiment,' held this ground on July 2 and 3, 1863, supporting Battery I of the 1st U.S. Artillery near the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. On the afternoon of July 3 the position endured the massive Confederate bombardment that preceded Pickett's Charge — one of the greatest artillery duels of the war — pinned down and unable to reply. Their steadiness under that fire helped hold the line at the battle's climax.

Straban Township, PA

East of Gettysburg this marker notes where the 10th New York Cavalry — nicknamed the "Porter Guard" — was engaged on the afternoon and evening of July 2nd, 1863. As part of the Cavalry Corps' Second Division, the regiment operated on the army's flank, the kind of screening and skirmishing that kept commanders informed and protected the infantry's vulnerable edges. The fighting around Gettysburg raged for three days before Lee's army withdrew back toward Virginia.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 119th New York Infantry, part of the Second Brigade, Third Division of the Eleventh Corps, at its position on July 1, 1863 — the opening day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The regiment was among the Union troops posted on the open plain north of town who met the Confederate advance head-on before being forced back through the streets to Cemetery Hill. The date carved here fixes the moment when the fighting on this ground was fiercest.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument traces the movements of the 147th Pennsylvania Infantry during the Battle of Gettysburg. On the night of July 1, 1863, the regiment lay on the northern slope of Little Round Top, holding the extreme left of the Union army; before dawn on July 2 it marched to Culp's Hill, waited in reserve, and then moved back toward the left with its brigade as the fighting spread. The marker records the regiment's shifting role across the battlefield's second day.

Cumberland Township, PA

During the second and third days at Gettysburg, the William Bliss farm sat in the deadly open ground between the two armies, its sturdy barn a nest for Confederate sharpshooters who harassed the Union line. On the morning of July 3, 1863, men of the 14th Connecticut Volunteers seized the buildings and, on orders from their division commander, burned both barn and house so they could no longer shelter enemy marksmen. The field was cleared only hours before Pickett's Charge swept toward the Union center nearby.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the most advanced westward line held by the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry on July 1, 1863, near the unfinished railroad cut on the fields northwest of Gettysburg. As Confederate assaults came from both the north and the west, the regiment repeatedly changed front and its right wing charged toward the cut, fighting a series of stubborn stands even as it was slowly driven back toward town. It was combat of the most exhausting kind — men wheeling to face attacks from two directions at once.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by its own survivors, this monument remembers the men of the 157th New York Volunteers who fell at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. That day the regiment was thrown into the fighting north of town, where it was caught in a punishing crossfire and suffered severe losses in a matter of minutes before the Union line gave way. Veterans returning years later raised this stone to the comrades who did not come home.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where the 15th New York Independent Battery of Light Artillery went into action on July 3, 1863, the climactic day at Gettysburg. Ordered early to the front and posted on the left of the 5th Massachusetts Battery, the New Yorkers were directed by Major General Winfield Scott Hancock to open on the Confederate guns with solid shot and shell. Their fire helped answer the great artillery bombardment that preceded Pickett's Charge.

Philadelphia, PA

This towering steel barrel once formed the center gun of Turret 1 aboard the USS New Jersey, an Iowa-class battleship that stands today as a museum ship on the Camden waterfront across from Philadelphia. Each of these 16-inch guns could hurl a shell weighing as much as a small car more than 20 miles, and this one spoke in two very different wars — bombarding enemy positions in the Pacific during World War II, then again off the Korean coast a decade later. A single artifact like this collapses the distance between the factory floor of American industrial power and the far shores where that power was felt.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker tells the hard story of the 16th Maine Infantry on July 1, 1863. Ordered to hold a position at all costs to cover the retreat of the rest of the First Corps, the small regiment was overwhelmed and its commander, Colonel Charles W. Tilden, was captured along with most of the survivors; command of what remained passed to a captain. The 16th Maine's sacrifice is one of the battle's most poignant examples of a unit spent almost to nothing so that a larger force could escape.

Abington Township, PA · est. 2023

In the tense December of 1777, General Sir William Howe marched British and Hessian troops out of occupied Philadelphia hoping to smash the Continental Army once and for all. Over several days of skirmishing along the heights of Edge Hill, Washington's soldiers held their entrenched ground and refused to be dislodged. Unable to force a decisive battle, Howe pulled back to the city while Washington led his army onward to the hard winter that awaited at Valley Forge.

Scranton, PA · est. 2002

In May 1902, roughly 150,000 anthracite miners walked off the job across northeastern Pennsylvania, staying out for six months over union recognition, better pay, and shorter hours. With the nation's coal supply threatened, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, which held hearings at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton and granted several of the miners' demands in 1903.

Shenandoah, PA · est. 2002

In the spring of 1902, some 150,000 anthracite miners across Pennsylvania's hard-coal region laid down their tools and stayed out for six long months, demanding higher pay, shorter hours, and recognition of their union. When thousands of strikers clashed with authorities at Shenandoah that July, the National Guard occupied the town — but the crisis also drew President Theodore Roosevelt into the dispute, prompting him to appoint an Anthracite Coal Commission. It was the first time a president intervened as a neutral arbiter rather than siding automatically with the owners.

Stowe Township, PA

On July 14, 1909, largely immigrant unskilled laborers walked off their jobs at the Pressed Steel Car Company, launching one of the era's most violent industrial confrontations. Tension among strikers, replacement workers, and state police boiled over into a riot on August 22 that left eleven men dead near this footbridge. The strikers drew support from the Industrial Workers of the World.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 2012

In February 1910, more than 9,000 workers walked off the job at Bethlehem Steel, protesting low wages, forced overtime, and brutal conditions in one of America's industrial giants. The confrontation turned deadly when a striker was shot and killed amid the unrest. The strike failed to win immediate demands, but the federal investigation that followed confirmed the workers' grievances and helped push the steel industry toward reform.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2022

On November 17, 1967, thousands of Philadelphia students walked out of their schools and gathered at the Board of Education building to demand an education that reflected their own histories. The peaceful demonstration met police violence, but it stands as one of the earliest and largest youth-led actions in the national ethnic studies movement. Decades later, in 2005, the students' vision was realized when Philadelphia became the first U.S. district to require African American studies.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the ground held by the 1st Delaware Volunteer Infantry on July 2 and 3, 1863, as part of the Second Corps line along Cemetery Ridge. That ridge was the anchor of the Union defense and, on the battle's final day, the focus of the massive Confederate assault remembered as Pickett's Charge. Delaware, a small border state that remained loyal to the Union, sent this regiment into the very center of that stand.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2000

In December 1913, on this Pittsburgh corner, the Gulf Refining Company opened what is generally recognized as the first purpose-built drive-in gas station — a facility designed from the ground up to sell gasoline, oils, and lubricants to a public newly in love with the automobile. Before it, motorists bought fuel in cans from hardware stores and pharmacies. Its success set off a nationwide building boom, as rival oil companies raced to line American roads with thousands of filling stations.

Gettysburg, PA

This monument honors Battery I, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, famously led by Captain Hubert Dilger, a German-born professional gunner nicknamed "Leatherbreeches." As part of the Eleventh Corps' artillery, Dilger's guns were in action on all three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863, and won particular praise for their steady, accurate fire covering the Union retreat through the town on the first day. The State of Ohio erected the marker with the battery's motto, "Fidus et Audax" — faithful and bold.

Cumberland Township, PA

This tablet marks the position taken on July 3, 1863, by Battery K, 1st U.S. Artillery, on the southern end of the Gettysburg battlefield. Fighting alongside Union cavalry, the battery supported the attacks of the brigades of Brigadier Generals Elon J. Farnsworth and Wesley Merritt against the Confederate right flank in the closing hours of the battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the climactic third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, the regular-army horsemen of the 1st U.S. Cavalry rode up from Emmitsburg as part of Brigadier General Wesley Merritt's Reserve Brigade. On the fields south of town they pressed the Confederate right and rear for roughly four hours until a drenching summer downpour finally broke off the fighting. This tablet in Cumberland Township marks the regiment's share in the mounted action that helped guard the Union flank.

Cumberland Township, PA

In the sprawling cavalry fighting of the Gettysburg campaign, the 1st Vermont Cavalry skirmished with Confederate horsemen at Hanover and Hunterstown before the climactic third day. On July 3, 1863, led by the young Brigadier General Elon J. Farnsworth, the regiment charged across broken, rocky ground on the Union left — where Farnsworth was killed. The action is remembered as one of the war's costly and much-debated mounted charges.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 20th Regiment of Indiana Volunteer Infantry and marks where its commander, Colonel John Wheeler, was killed on July 2, 1863. The regiment fought in the desperate struggle for Devil's Den and the Wheatfield on the second day of Gettysburg. Wheeler was cut down at the head of his men as the Confederate assault surged against the Union left.

Cumberland Township, PA

On July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held the far left flank of the entire Union line on the rocky slope of Little Round Top. Running low on ammunition against repeated assaults from Longstreet's Confederates, the regiment's commander ordered a downhill bayonet charge that swept the attackers back and took hundreds of prisoners. This monument marks the ground where that stand unfolded, at the very hinge of the Federal position.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the evening of July 2, 1863, the far left of the Union line at Gettysburg rested on the 20th Maine and its former-college-professor colonel, Joshua L. Chamberlain. Ordered to hold the ground at any cost, the regiment beat back repeated assaults and, with ammunition nearly gone, swept forward to clear its front. The stand on the rocky slope became one of the most storied small-unit actions of the Civil War.

Gettysburg, PA

This monument commemorates the 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment, which reached Gettysburg on June 25, 1863, ahead of the Army of the Potomac. On the morning of June 26 it marched out the Chambersburg Pike and met the Confederate column at Marsh Creek, only to be overwhelmed and forced to withdraw that afternoon. These green emergency troops were among the first to oppose the Confederate advance into the town.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker recalls where the newly raised 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment briefly camped and skirmished with Confederate forces on June 26, 1863, days before the Battle of Gettysburg. Made up largely of untested emergency volunteers, the regiment encountered General John B. Gordon's advancing brigade and was quickly pushed aside. It captures the anxious opening moments of the Gettysburg Campaign, when Pennsylvania scrambled to meet the invading army.

Harris Township, PA · est. 1947

Pennsylvania's 28th Infantry Division traces its lineage to 1917, and it went on to earn a fierce reputation in the trenches of the First World War and again in the hedgerows and forests of the Second. Colonel Theodore Boal founded this hillside shrine to honor the division's fallen, and Pennsylvania made it an official state memorial in 1932. The site gathers the memory of two generations of Keystone State soldiers into one place of reflection.

Cumberland Township, PA

This battlefield monument traces the movements of a Pennsylvania regiment through the second day at Gettysburg, from a position near the ridges to the wooded heights of Culp's Hill and the banks of Rock Creek. Culp's Hill anchored the right of the Union 'fishhook' line, and the fighting there — often overshadowed by Little Round Top and Pickett's Charge — was ferocious and essential. Markers like this, placed by veterans decades later, recorded exactly where men stood, hour by hour.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the ground held by the 29th Ohio Infantry, commanded at Gettysburg by Captain Edward Hayes with J. B. Storer as adjutant. Part of the Twelfth Corps on the Union right, the regiment shifted among several positions in this vicinity on July 2 and 3, 1863 — at times in the entrenchments and at times held in reserve — during the struggle around Culp's Hill. Ohio placed the marker to record exactly where its soldiers served.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument records the position of the 29th Pennsylvania Infantry on July 2, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg. Withdrawn with its brigade at 7 p.m., the regiment returned in the night to find Confederate troops had seized the works it had left, and it took up a new line to the rear — part of the seesaw struggle for the Union entrenchments on Culp's Hill. The tablet's reference to a nearby marker shows how precisely Gettysburg's monuments map each unit's ground.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the position of Batteries B and L of the 2nd United States Artillery, horse artillery attached to the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Gettysburg. Armed with six 3-inch ordnance rifles under Lieutenant Edward Heaton, the combined battery provided the mobile firepower that supported Union cavalry operations in July 1863. Horse artillery like this could gallop into position and unlimber alongside fast-moving mounted troops.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker stands on the Gettysburg battlefield, where in July 1863 the Army of the Potomac turned back Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North in the bloodiest battle ever fought in America. It records the position of Batteries B and L of the 2nd United States Artillery — horse artillery attached to the Cavalry Corps, armed with six 3-inch ordnance rifles under Lieutenant Edward Heaton. Mobile guns like these rode with the cavalry, unlimbering quickly to support fast-moving mounted operations on the army's flanks.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the Gettysburg battlefield, this marker notes the July 3rd, 1863 position of Battery D, 2nd United States Artillery, which arrived with its corps and took post along the Taneytown Road. That road was a vital artery running behind the Union line, and the batteries posted along it anchored the army's reserve artillery on the final, decisive day of the battle. It was on July 3rd that Lee launched Pickett's Charge and saw his invasion of the North broken.

Mount Pleasant Township, PA

This marker records the Gettysburg position of Battery M, 2nd United States Artillery — horse artillery of the Cavalry Corps' First Brigade, fielding six 3-inch rifles under Lieutenant A.C.M. Pennington. In July 1863 these fast, mobile guns rode with Union cavalry on the flanks of the battlefield, screening the army and dueling Confederate horsemen far from the main infantry lines. Pennington's battery became one of the better-known horse-artillery commands of the war.

Cumberland Township, PA

This granite monument stands on the Gettysburg battlefield, where in early July 1863 a North Carolina infantry regiment took its place in the largest battle ever fought on American soil. Its surviving inscription names two of the unit's commanders, Kenan and Lewis, and records that one of them fell wounded in the fighting—the notation marking the human cost behind a single regiment's action over three days. North Carolina erected the marker in 1988 as part of the state's effort to identify where its own units stood and bled during the campaign. The closing line, a tribute to men who gave everything the situation allowed, speaks to how later generations chose to remember them.

Mercersburg, PA · est. 2009

When the 54th Massachusetts formed in 1863 as one of the first Civil War combat units open to African American men, its ranks drew heavily on Pennsylvania — more than a fifth of the regiment, with Mercersburg sending more volunteers than any Commonwealth town but Philadelphia. The unit's courage under fire won grudging respect and helped open the door to broader Black enlistment. Of the 38 U.S. Colored Troops veterans buried in this community, 13 wore the 54th's uniform.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 54th New York Infantry, the "Hiram Barney Rifles," of the First Brigade, First Division, Eleventh Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, the regiment fought on the northern field as part of the division holding the Union right, taking part in the hard combat that ended in a fighting retreat through the town to Cemetery Hill. Like many Eleventh Corps regiments, it was raised in New York with a strongly German-immigrant character.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument tells the story of the 58th New York Infantry — the "Polish Legion" — whose two companies held this position north of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, before being ordered back to Cemetery Hill to rejoin the rest of the regiment. From that stronghold the reunited unit fought on through July 2 and 3, and after Pickett's Charge was repulsed it advanced as skirmishers back into the town. Raised in New York with a strongly immigrant, Central-European character, the regiment was part of Krzyzanowski's brigade in the Eleventh Corps.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where four companies of the 59th New York Infantry held their ground at Gettysburg on July 2 and 3, 1863, amid the ferocious fighting along Cemetery Ridge. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Max A. Thoman, fell mortally wounded at the head of his men as the Union line absorbed and finally broke the Confederate assaults. The regiment's losses — six killed and twenty-eight wounded — are cut into the stone.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 5th Maine Battery — "Stevens' Battery" — of the First Corps, which fought here on July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, and was also engaged north of the Seminary on the battle's opening day. Commanded by Captain Greenleaf T. Stevens until he was wounded, the battery is best remembered for its punishing fire from this knoll against Confederate attacks between Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. Lieutenant Edward N. Whittier took command when Stevens fell.

Cumberland Township, PA

Battery F of the 5th U.S. Artillery, commanded by Lieutenant Leonard Martin, reached Gettysburg on the afternoon of July 2, 1863, and was first held in reserve. The next day it was brought forward to Ziegler's Grove, just behind the Union Second Corps line, as Longstreet's assault — Pickett's Charge — broke against Cemetery Ridge and was repulsed. Regular-army batteries like Martin's supplied the disciplined firepower that anchored the Union defense.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the movements of Battery I, 5th U.S. Artillery — Watson's Battery — on July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg. Arriving near Little Round Top in late afternoon, the battery advanced to the Peach Orchard and, as Confederate troops drove back the Union infantry, was forced to retire across Plum Run near the Trostle House while still firing. It records a Regular Army battery caught in the swirling fight for the Union left.

Cumberland Township, PA

On July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the regular-army troopers of the 5th U.S. Cavalry moved north from Emmitsburg with Brigadier General Wesley Merritt's Reserve Brigade and struck at the Confederate right and rear. The fighting rolled on for about four hours across the fields south of town until a heavy rain brought it to a close. This tablet in Cumberland Township records the regiment's role in that mounted engagement.

Cumberland Township, PA

On July 3, 1863, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry shifted to this point to meet a threatened attack on the Union flank, then hurried back in the afternoon to help repel the assault on the center before taking position on the crest of Big Round Top. The regiment's crisscrossing marches reflect the fluid, desperate maneuvering of Gettysburg's third day, as commanders shuttled units to wherever the line was most in danger. Big Round Top, the higher of the two rocky hills anchoring the Union left, loomed over the southern end of the battlefield.

Gettysburg, PA

Erected by the State of Ohio, this monument honors the 61st Ohio Infantry, which served in the Third Division of the Eleventh Corps during the three days of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863. The regiment took its place in the hard-pressed Union line north of town on the first day, part of the force that absorbed the Confederate assault before falling back to Cemetery Hill. Ohio placed monuments like this one across the battlefield to mark where its sons stood and fell.

Mount Joy Township, PA

This tablet marks where the 61st Pennsylvania Infantry stood at Gettysburg, the July 1863 clash that halted Lee's invasion of the North. After a grueling 37-mile forced march, the regiment reached the field late on July 2nd as part of the 6th Corps — the army's largest reserve — and held this position through the close of battle on July 3rd. Such rapid marches by fresh troops were exactly what let the Union army mass overwhelming strength at the decisive moment.

Cumberland Township, PA

This stone marks the position of the 69th Pennsylvania Volunteers on July 2 and 3, 1863, at the very center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. On the afternoon of the 2nd they helped repulse a determined assault by Wright's Georgia Brigade, and the next day they stood at the stone wall that became the focal point of Pickett's Charge. The regiment held ground that helped decide the battle.