[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13869]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                H.R. 659: PROTECTING AMERICA'S TREASURES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, earlier this afternoon we passed a bill 
regarding the Paoli and Brandywine Battlefields and the visitors' 
center at Valley Forge. I had planned to do a 5-minute this afternoon 
where I touched on some of the points in my comments regarding that 
bill, regarding a dispute that has arisen in the development regarding 
Gettysburg National Historical Park.
  This past weekend, my son Zachary, who is in fifth grade, was here 
with the Deer Ridge Elementary School, and among other things they went 
to Antietam, and on my way back to Indiana I joined them and then went 
on up to Gettysburg. We had a 3-hour hearing of the Subcommittee on 
National Parks at Gettysburg that I sat through and found the debate 
fascinating. Partly it is the struggles between a community that does 
not want to see the visitors' center moved away from where many of the 
retail attractions are and the National Park Service.
  I came away from that, A, not fully understanding the community's 
opposition. While I understood some concern if the visitors' center 
moves a half mile, in fact as a former retailer, and actually still own 
and lease out our retail businesses, it looks to me like this would be 
a huge advantage to every retailer in the town of Gettysburg, because 
the increased length of stay, the repeat visits, the more things to see 
and do will lead to more dollars being spent in the community.
  But beyond that, this is a national area, and it raises a number of 
questions that we have to sort through specifically on Gettysburg, 
which I hope will move ahead rapidly. This report was just released 
last week on the final general management plan, and I hope we can 
proceed. It has been held up for some time, and they have gone through 
all the procedures, but we need to get going on this. Also, some 
national debates, the differences between a historical park and a 
National Park.
  For example, this is not a wilderness area. One of the things, when 
we look at the basic purpose of a historical park is that it should 
look like it did at the time of the historic event, or at least have 
the feel of that historic event, and one of the problems that we have 
on some of our battlefields is, quite frankly, they are overgrown.
  One of the points that they make in this report on page 44 is that 
the peach orchard, which was a very critical point in the second day of 
the battle at Gettysburg, that it is now fashioned for fruit 
production, and then it does not look like the current peach orchard.

                              {time}  1900

  So we look and say, how could the soldiers have used that as any type 
of shield as the Confederate Army moved towards the Union line?
  Furthermore, the woods from McPherson Ridge, now the woods are 
overgrown, choked with growth, and we cannot experience the battlefield 
because we cannot visualize how the troops are moving. In many areas 
there are woods where there should not be, or farms that have been 
taken out so one cannot see what it was like for the soldiers to go 
through.
  One of the important parts of the experience is to see what it was 
like at the time the battle was fought. The National Cemetery movement 
took place, of which Edward Everett and President Lincoln spoke at 
Gettysburg. When we had the National Cemetery movement those were 
places of contemplation, where we reflect what happens when people die 
in battles. But the National Park itself should have the historic 
integrity of the battlefield. That is one of the key parts of this 
plan.
  Part of that is when we go, and currently at Gettysburg the visitors 
center sits at a key point in the fishhook of the Union line. So when 
we try to get a feeling of the battle, there sits the visitors center, 
there sits a modernist-looking building, which is a very 
architecturally significant building but nevertheless modern, that has 
a cyclorama in it, not to mention this huge tower going up. We cannot 
possibly get a feel for what it looked like to General Pickett coming 
up the hill or on Little Roundtop as you are looking down on the 
battlefield when you have this huge tower sticking up, and the visitors 
center and the cyclorama right in the heart where the battle was.
  The proposal would move the visitors center and the cyclorama over 
toward an area where the fighting did not occur. There was fighting to 
the east of it and fighting to the west of it, but it would be out of 
the center of the battlefield so we could appreciate it more.
  Furthermore, the visitors center has numerous purposes, one of which 
is interpretation. They need more space. Gettysburg is arguably, 
certainly in the Civil War, the case could be made it was the most 
significant battle.
  In addition, they have storage and display problems of artifacts and 
archives which are now in a non-air conditioned area. We pay sometimes 
hundreds of thousands or more to restore guns, or in fact have withheld 
restoring these because they are not in air conditioning, not in a 
place where you would put minor or let alone major artifacts, which we 
have from both armies in the Gettysburg battle.
  Furthermore, support services. There has been a big dispute. The 
restaurant and gift shop proposals have been scaled back, but one of 
the fundamental questions here is where do revenues come from and how 
are we going to fund these parks. I think this is a good plan. I hope 
this Congress will support it.

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