1913 Gettysburg Reunion - Facilities

Facilities

The War Department's Great Camp (Gettysburg Encampment, Anniversary Camp, Veterans Camp) provided tents and support facilities for the Civil War veterans and extended from both sides of Long Lane on the north to within 500 yards of the Bliss House. The Great Camp included the Great Tent (Big Tent, 200 x 450 ft) "with its thirteen thousand chairs"; the veterans' tents; quarters for 1,466 War Department soldiers (including camp commander Gen. Liggitt) & 2,179 mess personnel; 385 camp Boy Scouts from Washington; and other camp personnel for a total of 57,198 "persons quartered and subsisted in the Great Camp". The camp had a temporary U. S. Post Office; 90 PA Health Dept latrines throughout the camp with a seating capacity of 3,476; and near the Great Tent, an Emergency Station and 2 Comfort Houses of the health dept, which also supplied the Great Tent water fountains. The PA commission also set up a temporary morgue in the camp. A special platform on the Round Top Branch was built for veterans to disembark from steamtrains directly into the camp (in February, trolleys of the Gettysburg Electric Railway had been prohibited from using the branch).

After the state health department's Chief Engineer had estimated Gettysburg (pop. 4,500) would be inundated with 100,000 people, the borough agreed to the Commissioner of Health's request for his department to take over medical and sanitation efforts in the area from June 25-July 25. The department set up a field hospital at the Kurtz property facing Brickyard Lane on the north foot of East Cemetery Hill, as well as 6 Comfort Stations in the borough (1 at each railroad station), with a total of ~100 hoppers. The department also tested borough wells and mitigated contamination sources upstream of the Water Works supply on Marsh Crek. The American Red Cross Society, along with 72 additional Boy Scouts operated fourteen 7 ft x 7 ft Relief Stations for first aid and rest on the battlefield park roads, and the Tuberculosis Dispensary in Gettysburg was also used as a Relief Station.

Attached to the Great Camp were a battery of the Third United States Field Artillery and several companies of Regular Infantry. Companies A-D (14 officers & 285 men) of the Fifteenth United States Cavalry arrived on June 26 for guarding the battlefield and camped west of Seminary Ridge on the Hagerstown Rd, while a "model Camp" for a PA cavalry squadron was on the "College Athletic Field" adjoining the Commission's Headquarters. A total of 527 people were quartered at both the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg & the Pennsylvania College ("Gettysburg College" in 1921), including the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Commission, 4 troops of PA State Police, and in tents, PA Governor Tener's staff. Additional nearby encampments included the leased Newspaper Row ("Meadeboro") with 155 journalists north of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, an encampment of 30 Boy Scouts near Cashtown west of Gettysburg for traveler services on the Chambersburg-Gettysburg Pike, and Philadelphia and Baltimore salvation army encamped in Stonesifer's Grove at Biglerville, Pennsylvania.