Preservation Maryland

In July 1863, a tired and defeated Army of Northern Virginia arrived at the banks of the Potomac River at Williamsport, Maryland. Its invasion of the North, its second in two years, had met a bloody end at the Battle of Gettysburg in nearby Pennsylvania. Now it limped back towards Virginia, pursued by the battered but victorious Army of the Potomac. As the Confederates attempted to make their escape across the river, the two sides clashed at the Battle of Falling Waters. During the fighting, General J. Johnston Pettigrew, who only a few days earlier had survived Pickett’s Charge, was mortally wounded. The rearguard action by the Confederates allowed General Lee’s Army to escape across the river. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia would continue to fight until the surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. With the battle over, residents moved on, and the battlefield was mostly forgotten. 

In the early morning hours of December 16, 1944, the last major German counteroffensive of World War II was launched headlong into unsuspecting American forces.

On the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American history, we’re chronicling just a few of Antietam’s untold stories and unique layers of history. Follow along with Preservation Maryland’s President and CEO Nicholas Redding as he visits the battlefield, located in Sharpsburg, Maryland.

Central to the ability to tell this story is preservation, which is one of the primary reasons that Preservation Maryland launched its own battlefield preservation program aimed at helping to preserve, rehabilitate, and interpret some of the state’s most iconic places — and to make certain that the stories told are comprehensive and inclusive of their long histories.

Preservation Maryland unveiled new South Mountain branding at an event hosted today at Shafer Farm in Burkittsville, Md., on the 160^th anniversary of the battle.

The brand and logo will unite all future signage on the sprawling, many thousand-acre landscape, to knit together this story and educate and bring more visitors to key points on the battlefield.