Historic Wagon Road Preserved In Blue Ridge, Penn.

By Leon Reed · Originally published June 2016 · p. 16

BLUE RIDGE, Penn.—The Monterey Pass Battlefield Museum in Blue Ridge, PA, opened for the season on April 16th. Traffic at the museum was busy early Saturday morning, with a bus tour from Gettysburg and another sponsored by the Franklin County Visitors Bureau stopping in at the museum shortly after it opened. The Park commemorates the first battle Lee’s retreating army faced after leaving Gettysburg. As Lee’s wagon trains tried to cross South Mountain in a thunderstorm, troopers from Brig. Gen. George Custer’s Michigan Brigade and other U.S. cavalry attacked the wagons and their escorts. The battle lasted throughout the night of July 4th and most of July 5th. It eventually spilled over into Maryland, making it the only Civil War battle fought on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. The battle wound up costing the Confederates 1300 killed, wounded and captured and more than nine miles of wagons burned. The park takes in more than 100 acres. Volunteers from a local nonprofit, the Friends of Monterey Pass Battlefield, built a small museum at the center of the battlefield. The museum has interpretive panels about the importance of the battle as well as artifacts from the battle and the time period. Interpretive panels are also distributed around the 2 ½ hour battlefield driving tour. One feature of the opening day activities was a guided walk from the museum to the Old Moriah Furnace Road, the original wagon road over which Lee’s wagons and most of his army passed on their way from Gettysburg. The road was important from colonial times and still appears in roughly the condition it was in when Lee’s wagons passed. The Park has acquired a stretch of this road. The tour guide, Marshall Miller, said that the Friends plan to have it cleared away and marked so that it can be open to the public by mid-summer.