June and July Newsletter

Plans for a Monterey Pass Battlefield Seminar is underway:

The One Mountain Foundation will host the Monterey Pass Battle Seminar. Kari Saavedra and John A. Miller are coordinating an event that will feature Eric Wittenberg, J. David Petruzzi , Michael Nugent will be the keynote speakers of the event raising awareness of the battle of Monterey Pass, a feature in their new book entitled: "One Continuous Fight". Other nationally known and local historians are invited and will include Kent Masterson Brown author of "The Retreat from Gettysburg", Ted Alexander Historian at Antietam National Battlefield, John A. Miller Monterey Battle Historian and author and Mike Vallone of the Gettysburg Battlefield Tour Guides.

The Monterey Pass Battlefield Association along with the One Mountain Foundation and the Friends of South Mountain State Battlefield will be present with displays and explaining the importance of preservation and what a Civil War battlefield means to a community.

Emmitsburg Walking tour & Mountaintop Heritage Days:

Although hampered by the severe threat of weather, the tour highlighted the 145th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Campaign. The tour included a stop on the grounds of Saint Joseph’s Academy talking about Birney's Division, the Michigan Cavalry at the Tollgate, Indian Lookout and the Signal Corps operations that occurred there as well as the two skirmishes that occurred during the Confederate Retreat from Gettysburg. Plans are underway for next years' topics and tour route.

The Mountaintop Heritage Days was very successful. Seminars were offered in which many people came to attend. The Monterey Pass Battlefield Association was on hand all weekend handing out material about the Pennsylvania Campaign and talking among the public about the battle of Monterey Pass. Firing demos went very smoothly including the talk on the average German soldier of World War Two. See some of the photos from the Mountaintop Heritage Days.

The Monterey Pass Booklet now available:

On June 11th of this year, we picked up 1,000 copies of our new booklet. These booklets were printed by Rowan in Blue Ridge Summit. We can thank them enough for the job they did. The booklets are $10.00 at the site or $15.00 for U.S.P.S. delivery. We only have 1,000 so first come first serve basis only. The booklet puts the battle into simple terms for those who want to learn about the battle of Monterey Pass. We also included the attack on Fairfield Pass since that was part of the battle of Monterey.

New Group Promotes Attention For Lee’s Retreat Monterey Pass Battle:

By Deborah Fitts of the Civil War News

MONTEREY, Pa. — A clash of arms in the mountains during Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg is the focus of a new group that is seeking to draw attention to the little-known battles associated with Monterey Pass.

The action, extending in stormy weather from sundown on July 4, 1863, to the wee hours of July 5, was “very, very unique,” said John Miller, who heads the nonprofit Monterey Pass Battlefield Association.

“It was the only battle fought in four counties and two states (Pennsylvania and Maryland), and on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.”

Miller’s band of volunteers is hoping to promote tourism to the “Four Corners” area of South Mountain and raise awareness of the fighting.

Hard on the heels of the battle of Gettysburg, around 9 p.m. on July 4, near Fountain Dale, Pa., Union cavalry in pursuit of a retreating Confederate wagon train ran into the Confederate 1st Maryland Cavalry.

Hours of confused fighting, highlighted by artillery fire, included an unsuccessful Union attempt to force nearby Fairfield Pass. Eventually the Federals swept through Monterey Pass, capturing or destroying nine miles of wagons and taking 1,360 prisoners and many horses and mules.

The delay achieved by the relatively small Confederate force was striking, Miller asserted.

“Nowhere in Civil War history do you ever find a handful of guys holding off three brigades of Federal cavalry,” he said. The storm and the darkness presented challenges of their own. “They couldn’t see what they were shooting at.”

This fall the battlefield association (One Mountain Foundation) is planning a seminar to raise money for interpretive markers. Miller wrote a booklet on the battle that is expected out this summer, again with proceeds to go back into the organization’s efforts.

The group’s Web site describes tour options, and there are plans afoot for living-history events. And Miller said they are creating a database of photographs dubbed “the Fighting Faces” connected with the battle.

Miller cited another point of interest in the area, the summer home that Walter Taylor, Lee’s adjutant, purchased in 1890 in the community of Cascade, then a summer resort.

Taylor’s daughter rebuilt the house after it burned, and it is now a B&B, the Cascade Inn. Miller said that Taylor would recall how he joined Lee in a meal during a pause in the retreat near Monterey Pass.

John Miller serves also as Civil War historian for the Emmitsburg Historical Society. He works seasonally interpreting the Civil War at South Mountain State Battlefield in Boonsboro, Md.