Former Gettysburg Country Club Enters Its Next Phase

(Gettysburg, Pa.) — The long preservation journey of the former Gettysburg Country Club, which saw intense fighting on July 1, 1863, entered a new phase this summer, as the American Battlefield Trust launched a campaign to pay a second installment of its purchase cost and is announcing an agreement with Cumberland Township to provide a temporary home for local police and administrators while their permanent space undergoes a major renovation. Under the rent-free agreement, which currently runs through March 31, 2026, the township will pay only utilities and one-third of the mowing, maintenance, and snow removal costs for use of the modern clubhouse facility. 

“We are pleased to be good neighbors and to offer this building for use by local officials while plans take shape for a landscape restoration and interpretation plan,” said David Duncan, president of the American Battlefield Trust.  

The Trust acquired the 15-acre property last November, ending years of uncertainty about its eventual fate. The larger golf-course has been part of Gettysburg National Military Park for more than a decade, but developers had eyed the portion fronting Chambersburg Pike for a large apartment complex until local advocacy opened the door to a preservation solution. Ultimately, the Trust was able to negotiate a $3 million purchase price, and fortunately structure the transaction into fundraising phases. This summer, it is seeking to raise $375,000 from private donors that it will match with an anonymous private gift.

Read the Trust's Statement on the passing of our friend Dr. Pete Carmichael, director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College

Cumberland Township offices will occupy the 2007 modern clubhouse buildings, while the Gettysburg Day Spa will continue its successful operations in the historic building that would have been familiar to President Dwight Eisenhower while he was an avid member and golfer. That historic building will be retained in any future landscape restoration plans that remove intrusive 21st-century elements. 

The site of the Gettysburg Country Club is among the most historically significant of the Gettysburg Battlefield. Its preservation journey began in mid-2008 when the Gettysburg Country Club declared bankruptcy after decades in operation. The site was identified as a top acquisition priority for the park and preservationists due to its historic significance: where Union cavalry slowed the initial Confederate advance and later fought over by the famed Union Iron Brigade and Confederate General James Archer’s Brigade of Tennessee and Alabama troops. The first true bloodletting at Gettysburg occurred along the banks of Willoughby’s Run, on and around the Country Club land. After the fighting moved off to the east, a field hospital was established on the banks of Willoughby’s Run and at least 23 combatants were buried on what became the Country Club.