Adopt A Position General Information and Guidelines
The purpose of the Adopt-A-Position (AAP) program is to engage volunteers in helping to meet goals as established by the Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP) to maintain the historic setting of the battlefield. Volunteers (VIPs) help us by performing field maintenance and labor that otherwise would not be completed due to budget and/or staffing restraints.
VIPs donate time and labor in preserving regimental positions, battery locations, or brigade lines. In most cases, regimental or battery positions will include a monument. Monuments like any historical feature on the battlefield have additional contributing elements. The elements include the foundation mounds (an important structural element of most of the regimental monuments) surrounding grounds, adjacent fences or walls, earthworks, any trails or walks to the sites, and may include the pasture in which the monument stands. All of these areas are important to the monument and the positions held by the Union or Confederate troops during the battle. The park will provide site assessments to outline the maintenance needs of each site.
Site Assessments
Volunteer Work May Include:
- Appling topsoil, seed and straw (materials provided by park) to eroded monument mounds.
- Raking and spreading grass seed on bare areas (monument mounds, turf areas, etc.).
- Raking leaves.
- Clearing brush from fences, stone walls, structures, earthworks and fortifications.
- Re-stacking stone fences; fence restoration.
- Building and repair fences.
- Painting fences (paint and supplies will be provided).
- Clearing pastures of weed growth and exotic shrubbery such as multi-flora rose and Japanese barberry.
- Painting artillery carriages.
- Planting seedlings.
- Repairing and/or maintaining trails.
- Collecting litter
Guidelines:
VIPs cannot work directly on a monument due to strict National Park Service technical standards designed for the protection of the physical condition of each monument.
Monument sites can receive treatments varying from general spruce up to labor-intensive landscape work. The park also has "orphan" positions available that include historic stonewalls and/or sections of fences or trails not identified with any particular military unit.
Volunteers will not use chainsaws.
Park provided hand tools are limited.
To Adopt A Position:
Individuals or groups interested in the AAP program should contact Angel De Jesus, the Adopt a Position Coordinator, at (717) 334-5533 extension 20. A two-year commitment is required of volunteers to work a minimum of one day each during the spring and fall program. The individual or contact representative for a group will arrange a date two weeks before the time that a work party will be at the adopted site and provide the necessary support equipment to accomplish the goals for the site. All work at the project site must be pre-arranged with the AAP Coordinator. The address for the coordinator is:
Angel M. De Jesus Jr.
Gettysburg National Military Park
405 Taneytown Road
Gettysburg, PA 17325
717-334-5533
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