Gettysburg Barns

Road trippin' with my two favorite allies

Fully loaded we got snacks and supplies

It's time to leave this town

It's time to steal away

Let's go get lost

Anywhere in the USA

Let's go get lost

Let's go get lost

- Red Hot Chili Peppers

The wife and I went to Gettysburg, PA last weekend.  It is something we have been wanting to do for years.  We love history and historical sites.


We left on Friday and drove down to Gettysburg.  There was a lot of construction and delays on the highway.  We decided to just get off the highways and see where the local roads would lead us.   We programmed the GPS to get us there and just enjoyed the small towns and the country.  I wish we had more tme to stay a while in some of these towns (we especially liked Bloomsburg, PA).


We stayed at a historic inn in town that was known to be haunted.  The only spirits we saw came in bottles!

We did a tour of the battlefields.  You go to the visitor's center and buy a CD which guides you through the various sites in order of their occurrence over the three days of the battle.  It was great!  We had awesome weather and got a great sense of the terrain the battles were fought over.


Being a 'barn' guy,  I was able to enjoy some of the barns in the area.  Three in particular were interesting.


The first was a 3-story bank barn.  The top story (like mine) would be the hay mow.  The second level would hold the livestock, while the basement would be the collection area for the manure.  The overhang of the second story allowed the farmer to shovel the manure.  This barn was located east of Oak Ridge in the battlefields.  What a beauty.

The second barn was the most interesting.  It is a privately owned barn which adjoins the battlefields.  It is known as the Trostle barn.  The Trostle's owned this barn during the Civil War.  I found this interesting because it is primarily made of brick, and there is a cannon ball hole in one gable!

The last barn is known as the Codori barn.  The Codori farm was located in the fields west of Cemetery Ridge. For those of you who know about Gettysburg, this is the area where doomed Pickett's Charge occurred.  From what I have read, the southern soldiers were clustered about the barn and using it as protection as they moved up the ridge.  What history!

There were other barns about the grounds which were prominent in the battle.  I cannot believe the history these buildings have seen.  It is great they are still preserved.  I would really like to go inside these barns and see how they are built.