Antietam National Battlefield

I also really wanted to visit Antietam National Battlefield. It’s on the way from Falls Church to my parents’ house, and I’ve never been. We originally planned to stop at Antietam on the way back from Leslie’s wedding, but we stayed longer in PA. Since it’s over an hour each way, we then decided to make a day trip up there and hit up the outlets, as well.

Antietam is a must-visit battlefield to an Civil War or American history buff. The bucolic hills and farms really make it hard to imagine the horrific fighting and carnage that occurred there. If you get a chance, you need to visit. Plan to spend longer than you expect. We thought the tour would take about two hours, but we wound up spending about four hours at the park. We didn’t even get out at some of the tour stops.

Address and Location

The Visitor Center is located at 5831 Dunker Church Road, Sharpsburg, Maryland. You access the rest of the park behind the Visitor Center.

Cost

Antietam National Battlefield offers a few admission options. Individual passes run $7 for three days. Vehicles can purchase three-day passes for $15. You can also buy annual passes for $30. As always, America the Beautiful Pass holders get in for free.

What to do

Start your trip at the Visitor’s Center. They have a museum and a video (which featured Virginia Tech professor emeritus Dr. James Robertson). Antietam has a route that you can walk or drive. Grab a map and head out. The Dunker Church is the first tour stop. The church served as the Union Army headquarters and saw the bloodiest day of the Civil War. Ironically, the Dunkers were a pacifist group of German Lutherans.

The footprint of Antietam is quite large, but the terrain is really hilly and uneven. The battle lines shifted a lot over the course of the day. To me, the battle has three focal points. The first was the Bloody Cornfield. This was the first major engagement of the day and saw over 12,000 soldiers fight. The carnage started here as the two armies lined up within range of each other and started shooting.

The second area is the Old Farm Road. This sunken road served as a natural entrenchment for the Confederates and allowed them to inflict heavy losses on the advancing Union troops. The Rebels were well positioned in the lower area, and the Yankees were sitting ducks marching downhill towards them with no cover. The observation tower was built by the Army around 1900 to allow a new generation of officers to study what happened at this battle.

The final key area of the battlefield was Burnsides’ Bridge. The Confederates retreated from the Farm Road and fled to higher ground. Unfortunately, this bridge created a bottleneck when the soldiers couldn’t climb the large embankment on the other side. Again, high numbers of casualties occurred here. This sycamore tree was just a sapling during the battle in 1862 and still stands today.

We also visited the National Cemetery over in the town of Sharpsburg. Many of the Union soldiers who died in battle were reinterred here.

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