The Town

The town of Gettysburg consists of a town square with roads leading off in all four directions.  Even before they reach the town limits all four of these roads have split at least once making the town a rather amazing collection of cross roads.    I doubt that there is another community of this size that has such a collection of roads converging on it.    You can get lost but all you have to do is turn around and you will end up back at the town square.   On family vacations Indian Village was the first indication coming in from Ohio that we had finally entered G-Burg tourist territory.

A few miles later we hit the battlefield and on the right was Arnold's Shell Station.  Their address was 250 Buford Ave. - just down from the Lutheran Seminary.  The station itself is long gone.

The business most patronized by me during my year in Gettysburg was the local newsdealer at 51 Chambersburg St.   "Gettysburg News and Sporting Goods"  was on the first floor of this building and was my go to place for the Sunday newspaper (Baltimore News-American),  paperback books,  and the latest comic books - which were only 12 cents.

On the square itself (SE corner) was Rea & Derick,  your basic 50's soda shop but in a historic building.

In the years since Wills’ death, different owners remodeled the building for different purposes, including a drugstore on the first floor between 1936 and 1995. A privately operated “Lincoln Room” museum occupied the second floor from 1945 until 2005.

The diner was opened north of the square in the early 1950's.  The wonderful Varsity sign was replaced in the late 1960's by "Cannon Cafeteria" which reflected  its new cafeteria format.  A few years later it reverted back to its diner origins and is now called "Lincoln Diner".   It has always been at the same location.   The Enterprise News Agency at 26 Carlisle St.  was in the brick building beside it.

Still at 204 Carlisle Street is this house that once operated as The Blythe Tourist Home.   It may have been built as a tourist home but more typically these were private homes converted to take advantage of the town's growing function as a tourist destination.  These were largely put out of business with the wave of new motels which opened up on the south side of Carlisle Street and elsewhere around Gettysburg in the 1950's and 60's.   The Blythe Tourist Home is not listed in the 1958 Gettysburg Telephone Directory.

The first major roadside tourist destination in the area was the massive Lincoln Logs Hotel & Restaurant.  Their gimmick was that the entire complex was made of logs and I'm sure that besides tourists they had plenty of locals and college students as customers.   It was a great gimmick for its day but as the structures aged they required too much upkeep.  By the time it closed it was dated and rundown.   Lincoln Logs are still around as toys but I don't think the toy was introduced by the Greenawalt family or sold in their gift shop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Logs

There has been some version of Dick's Sub Shoppe at 168 Carlisle St.  since forever.  

It currently is a coffee shop.

The station building looks much the same although they no longer sell gas or service cars.

This is the restaurant section of the 1959 Gettysburg phone book.  Note the Hoagie House,  I had never heard of a hoagie until I got to Gettysburg,  this was an eastern term for a sub.  Some hoagie place in town delivered to the dorms and the first time somebody asked me if I wanted to order a hoagie I had no idea what they were talking about.   Same thing with scrapple which you can still get at the Varsity Diner and at Texas Lunch.  

Texas Lunch and Varsity Diner are still in operation.   We used to eat quite often at the Peace Light Inn which was located near the Peace Light monument,  an easy walk from campus.   It is not listed in this section but has an entry in the Motel section of the directory.

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas, is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving.

The Majestic was still under private ownership in 1968-69 and bringing in new films each week,  sometimes double features,  mostly first run but sometimes some real strange stuff or an old classic.  For some reason I tend to forever associate a film with the theater in which I saw it for the first time.   Those that I recall seeing that year are: Guess Who's Coming To Dinner",  "The Wrecking Crew" (the manager even gave me a couple lobby cards from that),   "Gone With The Wind",  "The Green Slime",  and "Barbarella".  

"2001 - A Space Odyssey" was so hugely hyped that the SUB chartered buses to D.C. shortly after it was released.   It had premiered way back in April but only at a limited number of theaters who screened it for months.   The bus drove us directly to the theater,  dropped us off,  and then picked us up at the conclusion of the movie driving us straight back to Gettysburg.  That was my first time in D.C.  and was not unlike charging planes and then being able to claim a visit to the city.  And yes,  we were suitably impressed by the film,  none of us had ever seen anything like it.

The SUB also showed old films each week in the ballroom.  I saw every Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields film in there that year.  

Among the tourist traps on the road out of town toward Maryland was "Fantasyland Storybook Park",  the "Copter Tour" heliport,  and a place called Fort Defiance.    Although their connection to the events of July 1863 was tenuous they did not totally ignore the battle and many parents of baby boomers were secretly thankful for any activity that would entertain their children.  

  The National Park Service maintains three towers in Gettysburg National Military Park, on West Confederate Avenue, Culp's Hill and Doubleday Avenue. 

All were built in the mid-1890s. Two are 70 feet tall, the third about half that height.