New trails to explore at Gettyburg’s Little Round Top
Gettysburg National Military Park (WHTM) – The National Park Service still hasn’t announced an exact date Little Round Top will reopen.
“We’re still working within the reopening window of late spring to early summer of this year,” says Jason Martz, Visual Information Specialist for the park.
Still, there’s been a lot of progress since abc27 last visited in March. Much of the work is in the “final touchup” phase, and the classic metal “Little Round Top” sign’s been put back up.
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Once the area reopens and people come to visit, they’ll find Little Round Top easier to explore.
“What we’ve been able to do,” explains Martz, “Is implement a new system of trails that goes all over the hill from the north end to the south end and even out to the west.’
“In the past, there really wasn’t a good trail system and when visitors needed to get from point A to point B, they basically made up their own trails and we called those social trails. Social trails tended to be straight up and down the hill, which eventually caused a lot of erosion due to heavy rains.”
Little Round Top at Gettysburg close to reopening
As far as the rough terrain of Little Round Top, the trails are ADA-compliant. Some of the new trails are concrete. Others are made of what’s called stabilized aggregate. It looks like dirt, but –
“It’s a mix of two small gravels that link together really well as far as size and shape, but it’s glued down. It basically acts and looks like Elmer’s glue and a couple of coats are applied to the gravel. It’s mixed in and it’s allowed to dry and harden and will provide a really fantastic space for visitors to walk.”
The brown gravel was chosen to match the natural soil of Little Round Top as closely as possible.
Gettysburg National Military Park shares updates to Little Round Top project
We went down a trail on the northwest side of Little Round Top that’s a work in progress. They’ll be applying stabilized aggregate, but right now the main thing you notice are rocks stretched across the path. They’re called water bars.
“The water bars here are strategically placed in areas around certain sections of the hill where the steepness or the pitch of the trail or the hill is a little bit too great,” says Martz. “And the fear would be that if we didn’t put water bars in, the erosion from all the heavy rains that we get here in Gettysburg would eventually cause damage to these trails.”
Unexploded Civil War-era device found in Gettysburg National Military Park
Along the trail are monuments that most visitors have never seen, because they were hidden from the road by trees and bushes. We stopped at a point where the trail branches in two directions, leading to two monuments.
“What we have here,” says Martz, pointing off to his right, “Is a monument off in the distance here behind me for what’s known as Gibb’s artillery battery. And then here to my left, we have the monument to the 99th Pennsylvania Regiment. And then right here behind the camera is another monument, to the 121st New York Infantry.”
Even for people who knew the monuments were here, getting to them was a challenge.
“There were no trails down here. And there really wasn’t a good opportunity for the visitor to explore this area of the hill without, shall we call it, bushwhacking.”
Gettysburg National Park shares update on Little Round Top rehab project
On the south end of the parking area is a new trail, built over an old road.
“Behind me is what’s known historically as Chamberlain Avenue. This was a one of the original roads through this area back in the days of the horse and buggy and the Model T,” says Martz. “Eventually, this was replaced by Sykes Avenue. The roads in many locations around the park were straightened as the automobile continued to become more and more prevalent. But this leads out to the famous 20th Maine monument. And as folks make the curve along the left-hand side, there are going to be two interpretive panels that help explain what happened down at this end of the battlefield.”
Martz says the new trails have met a lot of park service goals. “First, we wanted safety. We wanted to implement as many safety protocols as we could. We definitely wanted to incorporate as many accessible areas for visitors of all kinds to come in and be able to experience and enjoy Little Round Top.”
Little Round Top rehabilitation begins at Gettysburg National Military Park
They also want to tell the whole story of the hill.
“The story of Little Round Top isn’t just necessarily where visitors had been, to some degree, pushed by available parking, by available trails onto that small area on the summit. There’s so much more to the story here, on the north side of the hill, the south side of the hill, and even the southwest corner of the hill. And all of those elements were very difficult or, in some cases, nearly impossible for visitors to get to. We’ve opened all of that up, and we’re now actually encouraging people to go there with the addition of all of these extra trails.”
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