Touring the Gettysburg battlefield can be a solemn and moving experience. But not if your eyes are transfixed on the 307-foot steel tower that looms over the battlefield. It is a wretched excess, an intrusion of rank commercialism that mars this historic landmark.
The tower should be blown to bits, the sooner, the better. It sits on private property overlooking the battlefield. Fortunately, the owners have expressed an interest in selling this atrocity. The asking price? In the vicinity of $6.6 million.
That's a fair hunk of change.
But a fund-raising effort has been launched by retired Baltimore ad executive Jim Holechek, the driving force behind the new Maryland memorial at Gettysburg. The idea is to buy the land, detonate the observation tower, dismantle it and donate the 7 acres to the National Park Service.
This fund-raising effort has the support of the park service, which is acutely aware of the eyesore created by the hulking steel tower put up in 1974. It is one of 100 private parcels inside the park that the agency wants to protect from development.
A nationwide fund-raising campaign is the best way to come up with the funds for this worthy project. Mr. Holechek already has a commitment from Controlled Demolition Inc. of Phoenix to blow away the tower -- for free. And with the huge amount of recent interest in Gettysburg's pivotal role in deciding the outcome of the Civil War, Mr. Holechek should find a large number of donors eager to help his latest cause.
The Gettysburg National Military Park attracts hordes of Civil War aficionados and the uninitiated every year. Its 6,000 acres bring back memories of a time and place that marked a turning point in this nation's history. Especially moving is a walk through the National Cemetery, where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address 131 years ago this month, and where the enormous sacrifice of human life on this battlefield makes a lasting impression. But even that moment is jarred by the intrusive tower.
It's time to wage a new battle at Gettysburg, to free that historic terrain of an inappropriate and unsightly edifice.