GettysburgPennsylvania

A city alive with American history

Gettysburg is one of the USA's most iconic historic destinations – as both the site of the most tragic battle of the American Civil War, and the place where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address. But Gettysburg isn’t just a place where something happened long, long ago. It’s a place where visitors from around the world experience history through state-of-the-art museums, engaging tours of the majestic battlefield and culture rarely found in a town of its size.

Gettysburg, which is in close proximity to Washington, Philadelphia and New York City, welcomes 3.5 million visitors annually. Visitors are drawn by the history, but enthralled by the small-town hospitality, the beautiful scenery and the abundance of shops, restaurants, wineries, farmers markets and attractions that commemorate the Civil War and beyond.

In July 1863, more than 165,000 soldiers converged on this town of only 2,400 residents to wage the largest battle of the Civil War. The battle didn’t end the four-year war, but became the turning point and will be forever revered as a place where sacrifice was symbolic of unifying the divided nation – none more so than through the words of the 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln through his immortal Gettysburg Address.

Today, visitors are riding horses on the Gettysburg battlefield just as Union and Confederate cavalry did more than 150 years earlier. Travelers are finding that great food isn’t just for big cities through the Savor Gettysburg Food Tour and emerging hard cider industry. People are realizing history doesn’t stop at the entrance to the battlefield; it's found throughout the inns, taverns and buildings lining the streets of this charming town.

And history doesn’t stop at the Civil War. The 34th U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who was a famed World War II general, and his wife, Mamie, lived in Gettysburg. Their home and farm are open to visitors year-round.

Gettysburg offers a variety of ways to tour the Gettysburg National Military Park – by bicycle, horse, Segway, on foot, by car, carriage and bus – each led by the destination’s renowned Licensed Battlefield Guides, celebrating 100 years in 2015. Battlefield tours are personal and engaging, aimed not only to educate travelers, but to be thought-provoking and inspiring.

This history is told through tracing the footsteps of Lincoln during his short, but monumental, trip to Gettysburg just four months after the battle. Today, travelers from around the world visit such places as the Historic Gettysburg Railroad Station where Lincoln arrived and walk to the cemetery where he delivered those famous words, “Four Score and Seven Years Ago…”

Gettysburg is a destination that has embraced its heritage. As international travelers seek to understand the beginnings of U.S. history in Philadelphia, or marvel at the nation’s heritage in Washington, D.C., Gettysburg has become an iconic place to grasp the magnitude of the USA's most trying time and where a president – in just two minutes – set the stage for a unified country.