Harpers Ferry, Antietam & Gettysburg make for breezy, but engaging, 3-day Civil War battlefield tour

We’re a flexible organization. In mid-July we guided more than 100 people around the Civil War battlefield of Antietam. During August’s first weekend, I had the pleasure of being the tour guide for three Southern California couples visiting Eastern historic sites.

We had a breezy itinerary: Harpers Ferry, Antietam and Gettysburg in three days. Our guests, Gary and Sonja Gray, Bob and Marylane Graham and Larry and Kara Campens, of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, were experienced travelers, and enjoyed one another’s company as we drove from site to site.

At Antietam, being fit and hale Californians, they suggested that we undertake the Cornfield Trail, which I had never done before. So we walked around and through that hallowed acreage, 1.6 miles round trip through some typical August heat, and got a great feel for the undulant terrain.

The other highlight of the tour for me was running into George Wunderlich and Susan Rosenvold of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine during our visit to the Pry House. This was the site of Gen. McClellan’s headquarters during the battle of Antietam. Now the Museum operates the building as a satellite medical museum to their main facility in Frederick, Md.

George was gracious to open the house for the Little Bighorn Associates tour group several weeks earlier, and to speak to the group about the Pry House’s profound significance in the evolution of military medicine. Once again, garrulous George, who is a most engaging and knowledgeable fellow, spoke to our group, also, and inso doing enlivened the day. The next morning I ran into Susan at the Antietam National Battlefield Visitor’s Center and shared notes on guiding battlefield tour groups.

I first visited the Pry House years ago when it was well off the beaten path of touring Antietam. To see the site so well protected, managed and enhanced by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine has been heartening. It’s now a must-see inside and out, especially on a clear day when you can look across Antietam Creek toward the battlefield and see the field through McClellan’s remote viewpoint.

At Gettysburg, we billeted at the Brafferton Inn, our new B&B headquarters since the ownership transfer of the Keystone Inn. We shared Saturday night dinner at The Fairfield Inn and had a beautiful summer Sunday day to see the sweeping view from Little Round Top.

The tour concluded with the Grays, Grahams and Campens walking the route of Longstreet’s assault (aka Pickett’s Charge in some circles) from the Virginia Monument to Cemetery Ridge. There I took a group photo as they stood at the Angle in front of the 71st Pennsylvania monument, known as the California Regiment.

- Tour Guide Robert Freis