ANTIETAM NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD -- Rocky Rosacker stood on the southern side of the Sunken Road - ground held by Confederate troops at the outset of the bloodiest day in American history. The yellow-green fields to the north that September morning in 1862 were Union territory.
The Annapolis man opened his arms wide, conjuring ghost armies in blue and gray.
"This is what Lee saw," said Rosacker, himself a combat veteran of the Marine Corps. "This is what Longstreet saw. This is what those guys faced. ... You can almost feel how it was the day of the battle."
It's a feeling that Rosacker says is threatened by a Rockville firm's proposal to build a cell phone tower on the edge of the battlefield.
Liberty Towers LLC says the 120-foot structure - it would extend 30 feet above the treeline to the west - would be disguised as a farm silo to blend in with the rolling farmlands of Western Maryland. But opponents say it would overwhelm a battlefield seen nationally as a model of historic preservation.
"One of the reasons that Antietam is so well-known and so well-respected is the fact that here, when you stand on the battlefield, what you see is a very rural environment that hasn't been impacted by commercial development," said John Howard, superintendent of Antietam National Battlefield.
The proposal - Liberty says it's one of several sites under consideration - has earned Antietam a place on the Civil War Preservation Trust's 2008 list of the nation's most endangered battlefields. It's among the most egregious examples, the group says, of the threat that development is posing to sites some view as sacred.
'Absurd'
"To put that thing up in that place is absurd," said O. James Lighthizer, president of the trust.
Mike Hofe, president and chief operating officer of Liberty Towers, has described the structure as a "stealth tower" that would have minimal impact on battlefield vistas. He says the proposal remains in the "early planning stages"; Liberty has yet to file for permits.
On the battlefield yesterday, a small herd of brown cows grazed in a fenced enclosure west of Antietam Creek. To the north lay cornfields that are planted by local farmers - like the cattle, part of the National Park Service's effort to restore the surroundings to their 1862 appearance.
Antietam National Battlefield remains a work in progress. Sixty percent of the land has been purchased since 1990.
Some modern elements intrude on the setting. There's the stone observation tower, built by the Department of War in 1890 to assist in officer training, and the markers and the monuments that indicate troop positions. The roads that cross the battlefield are now paved. Light traffic passed by on routes 34 and 65; a water tower looms in the distance.
But if it isn't quite the 19th century, Antietam maintains a sense of rural quiet. With just a few visitors yesterday, the only noise along the Sunken Road at midday was the chirp of a few lonely birds and the sound of the wind rustling through the tall grass.
It was in these fields on the morning of Sept. 17, 1862, that the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under Gen. Robert E. Lee, met the Union Army of the Potomac, under Gen. George B. McClellan. Nearly 100,000 men - including future President William McKinley and future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - fought in a battle that raged for 12 hours.
'A storm of balls'
"Such a storm of balls I never conceived it possible for men to live through," Confederate Lt. Col. A.S. "Sandie" Pendleton would write. "Shot and shell shrieking and crashing, canister and bullets whistling and hissing most fiend-like through the air until you could almost see them."
By the time the smoke and dust had cleared, an estimated 3,650 men lay dead. The Sunken Road, piled high with bodies, would be rechristened Bloody Lane.
On the battlefield yesterday, the cell tower proposal was news to Steve Rainey. The State College, Pa., man, a machinist at Penn State University, was visiting the battlefield with his son.
"I appreciate the fact that they're talking about disguising it, instead of just putting up a steel skeleton," he said. "But aren't there other places they could put it?"
Ben Rainey, a student at Penn State, was flat out against the proposal, disguise or no.
"I just can't see a tower being put out here," he said. "Especially down in the area of Bloody Lane. It feels somewhat sacred. If they let that in here, what next?"
Ned Cole calls Antietam his favorite battlefield. The Erie, Pa., man, a Vietnam veteran retired from the Border Patrol, figures he's visited eight times in the past 20 years. Yesterday, he was passing through on the way to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
Cole was unconcerned by the cell tower proposal.
'No big deal'
"That ain't no big deal, I don't think," he said. "As long as it's off site."
But Rocky Rosacker warned that the structure could be just the beginning for development out here.
"It's the camel's nose under the tent," he said. "Think of the sacrifices these kids made here. The more you add to it, the more you lose that feeling."
Jimmy Miller, Rosacker's friend, checked his cell phone.
"I've got four bars and two missed calls," he announced. "What do I need a cell tower for?"
matthew.brown@baltsun.com
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, fought near Sharpsburg, was the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. About 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing after 12 hours of combat on Sept. 17, 1862. The battle ended the first invasion of the North by Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and led to President Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War battlefield is administered by the National Park Service.
[Sources: Antietam National Battlefield; National Park Service]