Sights set on taking back battlefield -- to 1863

0 Comments | USA TODAY, July, 2007 | by Andrea Stone

The National Park Service has removed trees, a car dealership, a motel and more to show visitors the landscape seen by soldiers. The great Civil War battle was fought in the first three days of July, seven score and four years ago.

Seven years after the National Park Service took down the privately owned tower overlooking the Gettysburg National Military Park, the revered battlefield is on its way to looking the way it did in 1863, when Union and Confederate soldiers clashed there in what proved to be the turning point of the Civil War.

Also gone in recent years from the most-visited Civil War battlefield: a motel, a car dealership and acres of trees and other non-historical vegetation that obscured the landscape soldiers saw 144 years ago. Park officials say...