Looking back to see the future

Jack Deatherage

(4/2024) Grandmother Deatherage, Aunt Hilda and Cousin John lived in a second floor apartment at 130 West Main in 1960. There was a snack bar and bowling alley next door. Across the street was a movie theater- 125 West Main. Behind Grandmother's apartment building was Bollinger's field where Hereford cattle grazed prior to becoming the beef (sold at Bolligner's butcher shop -now apartments 110 and 112 West Main) of my kidlethood, the standard I judge beef by.

When John and I could beg a few coins from our moms we'd go bowling, to the movies, or what I remember most fondly- walk "down town" to Doc Carter's drugstore, 24 West Main, and buy several balsa wood gliders and rubber band powered airplanes. After assembling the "aircraft" in the apartment we'd head to Bollinger's field and amuse the Herefords for as long as the fragile toys lasted.

The buildings mentioned are still standing (mostly converted into apartments), the businesses are decades gone- just a few among the 50 some I recently listed for shi- umm... giggles. Sixty-three years of fading memories in an ever declining mind -history that matters to few but me.

I've heard for decades that the people of Emmitsburg don't want the town to change. I've counted myself among the anti-change crowd, yet the history of this town is change! In my lifetime I've seen seven grocery/butcher shops, three barber shops, a motel, an auto dealership, several garage/gas stations, a clothing store and a dry goods store close their doors in Emmitsburg. All the while I watched houses being built across the street and behind the alley from our house on North Seton. I watched Silo Hill, Northgate, Brookfield and Southgate become neighborhoods.

While enough residents organized to stop the development of the Boyle farm (arguably to the general detriment of the town) I've yet to see the citizenry organize in numbers large enough to bring much of benefit to the town other than housing developments and cookie cutter businesses. According to the US Census, as of 2021 there were 2,842 people living in Emmitsburg. I think maybe ten of them attended the town's recent comprehensive plan workshops, though I'm sure, I pray, I doubt as many, let alone more than that, attended via Zoom.

I attended the workshops, though I mostly observed and later emailed my thoughts to town planner, Najila Ahsan, (nahsan@emmitsburgmd.gov).

Email excerpt: "As an historic town Emmitsburg is already a tourist destination. Promoting that might bring generally unwanted traffic to the town, but tourists eventually leave. The upside of tourists are the moneys they spend while visiting. I'd sooner see more traffic than more housing developments. The historical aspects of this town have barely been scratched. "

Pre-COVID I was told 3 million people a year traveled between Gettysburg and Frederick to tour the various Civil War historical sites. With the battlefield reenactments to our north each summer and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, it seems to me holding an after-battle reenactment of the Daughters of Charity rendering aid and comfort to the wounded would be an obvious tourist draw. I believe the Daughters already hold a small event on their property, a brief historical tour/lecture? Bringing in "living" historians from the various factions- the Daughters, period doctors, period entertainers (minstrel banjo players and bands) and the "wounded" from the recent battlefield reenactments to the north would draw some of those millions of tourists off US 15 for a "new" Civil War event that, as far as I know, is not being held anywhere else in this region.

The Emmitsburg Rifle is another unexploited bit of the town's history. Pre-COVID I was in contact with an officer in a national muzzle loading rifle association who told me his organization could not understand why the town refused to promote being the home of a highly regarded gunsmith, another tourist draw. Depending on who's doing the telling, John Armstrong is among the top five 19th-century gunsmiths. I've also been told his work as a metalsmith is recognized in some artist communities.

I've recently learned the Union Army had a campsite where Rutters now is. As I understand it, the site was NOT properly documented in the rush to bring the new business to town. I was also told that a millhouse once stood at the bottom of Tollgate Hill, this side of Toms Creek, on the Daughter's property. I've heard that the Emmitsburg area was once known for it's wheat production, it's mechanic shops and small factories making products for regional use. How these and other facts might be commercially exploited to the town's advantage is beyond me. I worry that the loss of the town's history is going to turn the town into just another gas station stop along US 15.

Over the years I've been attending town meetings I've been told by various commissioners that the town is not in the business of creating businesses. Okay, so whose responsibility is it to reach out to new businesses? Who creates the codes and regulations that new businesses would have to comply with? Who decides where a new business might be allowed to open? Who clears the bureaucratic tangles that might slow, or prevent potential businesses from approaching the town?]

Enter Gary Casteel, the nationally recognized sculptor and painter who restored the town's WWI doughboy statue in 2016 and later proposed a national Civil War memorial within the town limits. According to Casteel, there are national memorials dedicated to the wars America has fought, but not one for the war that turned a nation of sovereign states into the nation it currently is.

Negotiations to build the memorial were underway with the state's tourism board, a landowner and the town during Mayor Briggs' tenure, but fell apart for reasons I've never understood. Also during Mayor Briggs' tenure, Casteel proposed a John Armstrong memorial that also failed to come to fruition. Casteel has recently presented his Civil War memorial to Mayor Davis and a new board of commissioners. Having seen Casteel's drawings of the memorials I have to admit I'm a bigger fan of the John Armstrong than the Civil War. What can I say? I was into the flash, flame, smoke and thunder of flintlocks.

Either memorial will draw tourists. When they arrive they will explore the rest of this place and spend money, if there is anything to spend money on. Which brings me to the community garden on Cedar Avenue.

When Brian McKenney and I took it into our brain-damaged heads to build the garden with the help of a few friends, we put as much of our money and sweat into it as we could muster. When my enthusiasm for the project grew wobbly, Brian insisted more people would show up to help if he and I built the garden. And so they have this second year.

If Casteel builds the memorials, tourists will come. Someone will see the business potentials. The town will prosper, without greatly increasing the population.

Gary Casteel's pertinent work can be seen at his shop in Gettysburg - 789 Baltimore Street.