Beer trails, quirky sights bring new wave of tourists to Gettysburg
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Here’s a few things you can see in the town where one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War was fought:
A meticulously detailed diorama of the three-day battle’s climax, Pickett’s Charge, featuring thousands of itty-bitty cats in blue and gray uniforms.
A roadside museum featuring thousands of elephant toys, circus souvenirs and other elephantabilia collected by “Mister Ed” Gotwalt.
A portrait of Marie Antoinette — painted in human blood.
All of the above can be found, along with a brand-new “pour tour” of Adams County breweries and wineries, if you wander off the beaten trail to Gettysburg,
For decades, Gettysburg National Military Park has been the main attraction here. In 2017, 1.1 million people visited the battlefield and its museum and visitors center, where a 377-foot cyclorama painting puts viewers smack in the middle of Pickett’s Charge. Thousands more visit — many in period costumes — for the annual Gettysburg Civil War Reenactment commemorating the battle and its 50,000 casualties on July 1-3,1863.
But the numbers have slipped slightly over the years. After all, it’s been almost 28 years since Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” series brought the conflict back to center stage.
Destination Gettysburg thinks it knows how to attract a younger crowd and turn what some see as a day trip into a several-day destination: Promote regional assets that have little or nothing to do with the Civil War.
“We want it to be a cool place to visit,” says director of communications Carl Whitehill.
These days, that means connecting Gettysburg to food and craft beverages and outdoor recreation. There are more than a dozen craft breweries, wineries and cideries within a few miles of downtown Gettysburg. Mr. Whitehill’s group has connected the dots and this spring started promoting a selfguided tour where visitors can win prizes by collecting stamps in a “passport.”
The National Park Service and the Gettysburg Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization that partners with it, also have gotten into the act. One of the partners on the tour, Mason Dixon
Distillery, is making smallbatch rye whiskey from grain grown by local farmers on battlefield soil. And Good Intent Cidery makes hard cider from apples grown in battlefield orchards, including the 1863 Rose farm.
Foundation “recruits” pick the apples and help transform them into cider. Currently sold just online or at Good Intent’s cidery in Bellefonte, Pa., it should be available at the refreshment salon in the visitors center by next year, said Elle Lamboy, vice president of philanthropy.
It’s a win-win situation, she says. Proceeds benefit the park and create a sustainable fund for the care and preservation of the historic battlefield orchards. It also gets a younger generation involved.
A weekend in Gettysburg can mean farms, orchards and farmers markets to explore, and restaurants serving seasonal dishes crafted from locally sourced ingredients. To unwind before hitting the wineries or an afternoon of shopping, you can take goat yoga or visit a day spa. And if you’re there for the history, visitors have new ways to see the battlefields — by horse, bike or Segway.
Our Gettysburg adventure started at one of the town’s kookiest non-battlefield attractions. Mark Kosh opened the Gettysburg Dime Museum in May 2016 to give kids something fun to do. Modeled after the freak shows that gained popularity in the 19th century, it’s filled with weird stuff he’s collected over the past 20 years.
One room holds a life-size wax replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” and “Elephant Man” John Merrick greets you in another. You’ll also see a two-headed pig preserved in formaldehyde, a shrunken head, an envelope addressed by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and (Don’t shoot the messenger!) a replica of Abraham Lincoln’s last bowel movement.
Some nutcase back in the day decided to duplicate our 16th president’s last meal, collect what passed and try to pawn if off as a bona fide, but gross, presidential relic. It was proved a fraud, but there it is anyway, encased in glass in the museum, which for financial reasons will close after three seasons on Nov. 17.
From there, we headed to Civil War Tails at the Homestead Diorama Museum. First we chuckled at the 6,000-plus miniature cats that Rebecca Brown and her twin sister, Ruth, have fashioned out of clay into Civil War officers and infantrymen. We had to marvel at the detail, and the effort that went into creating the dioramas, which include the fight for Little Round Top and the Angle at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge. The latter took four years to complete and has 1,900 feline soldiers.
Rebecca Brown, 34, made her first cat figures — Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee — when she was 11 in 1995. She was so happy with the result, she and her sister decided to make soldiers to go with the generals. Soon they had hundreds and, by 1999, their first to-scale diorama featuring horses, cannons, fences and trees. They’ve been building them ever since, each more elaborate than the last. Rebecca constructs Confederate soldiers while Ruth creates the Union forces.
“It’s been fun,” Rebecca says, noting that the museum draws everyone from cat people to battlefield guides. “We get to share stories of history.”
At Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum & Candy Emporium in nearby Orrtanna, it’s all about elephants. More than 12,000 are on display, in all shapes and sizes, arrayed in two long and narrow rooms. It’s free, and with items like a sculpted human head with tiny elephants bursting from the skull on view, kind of cool. Plus, if you get tired of all the elephants in the room, there’s candy — more than 900 varieties and also 70-plus flavors of fudge.
Still, it was the pour tour that captured our attention.
At Thirsty Farmer Brew Works in Biglerville, which sits across the road from the landmark Historic Round Barn & Farm Market, we washed down pulled pork sandwiches with pints of hefeweisen and a hoppy IPA brewed on site. We also did a wine tasting at Boyer Cellars, also in Biglerville, after which we got lost — really — in an evergreen hedge maze planted in 2009 with more than 1,850 feet of walkways.
And at Hauser Estate Winery, which sits high on a hill overlooking Adams County farmland, orchards and forests, we spent a happy hour deciding which, of many varieties of the Jack’s Hard Cider made there, we liked best. (Dryhopped.)
We only had one night in Gettysburg, so dinner had to count. We chose wisely with Food 101, a tiny BYOB restaurant on Chambersburg Street that prides itself on sourcing its ingredients locally. Everything is made from scratch here, and the seasonal menu is, in a word, terrific. I spent the next week trying to re-create the sweet corn summer salad we started off with, after failing to sweet talk the recipe for its white balsamic dressing out of Don Dantona, the eatery’s owner. And because we were eating there, we got a discount on the cold bottle of Vidal Blanc from Knob Hall Winery across the street.
If your idea of breakfast is a latte and homemade pastry, you also can’t miss at Ragged Edge Coffee House down the street. Service is not exactly speedy, but its laid-back hippie vibe is perfect for a lazy Sunday morning.