. Tell it on the Mountain The Monument at Gathland…

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Tell it on the Mountain
The Monument at Gathland

I didn’t know the United States had a War Correspondents Memorial until Todd sent me photographs of it. It’s in a place called Gathland State Park, near Crampton’s Gap and Burkittsville, MD. It was built by one of the many eccentric folk art visionaries that dot our history with their cracked pots and our landscape with things like the Watts Tower. They are a big part of what makes America great.

The War Correspondents Memorial was built by George Alfred Townsend. Born in 1841, Townsend is credited with being the youngest news correspondent during the U.S. Civil War. He wrote under the pen name of Gath, which he derived by adding an “h” to his initials. He claims to have been inspired to do so by this biblical passage: “Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askalon” (11 Samuel 1:20). Somewhat ironic, huh? In 1884 he purchased a tract of land on which he built his estate. He named it Gathland.

Townsend built about twenty monumental structures at Gathland, most with very practical purposes. He built his own mausoleum. This had a golden dog statue and an inscription over the door reading “Good Night Gath.” Like many of his other structures, the mausoleum toppled long before his death in 1914. Somebody stole the dog.

His most lasting architectural endeavor is the monument he built to his fellow war correspondents in 1886. It is described by Ruthanna Hindes in her biography of Townsend:

“In appearance the monument is quite odd. It is fifty feet high and forty feet broad. Above a Moorish arch sixteen feet high built of Hummelstown purple stone are super-imposed three Roman arches. These are flanked on one side with a square crenellated tower, producing a bizarre and picturesque effect. Niches in different places shelter the carving of two horses’ heads, and symbolic terra cotta statuettes of Mercury, Electricity and Poetry. Tables under the horses’ heads bear the suggestive words “Speed” and “Heed”; the heads are over the Roman arches. The three Roman arches are made of limestone from Creek Battlefield, Virginia, and each is nine feet high and six feet wide. These arches represent Description, Depiction and Photography.

The aforementioned tower contains a statue of Pan with the traditional pipes, and he is either half drawing or sheathing a Roman sword. Over a small turret on the opposite side of the tower is a gold vane of a pen bending a sword. (Note: This weather vane may now be seen in the Park Museum.)

At various places on the monument are quotations appropriate to the art of war correspondence. These are from a great variety of sources beginning with Old Testament verses.

Perhaps the most striking feature of all are the tablets inscribed with the names of 157 correspondents and war artists who saw and described in narrative and picture almost
all the events of the tour years of the war.”

The truth is besieged in wartime, as is the truth teller. The fact that battlefields still fill with artists, poets, reporters, photographers, and, now, bloggers says a lot about the persistence of the human spirit and the power of the truth. It’s good that someone thought to build a monument to war correspondents somewhere in our country. And it’s nice that it’s just a short drive from Washington DC–Gathland Park, not far from Antietam and other Civil War battlefields, is now managed by the Maryland State Parks Commission.

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Photos: Todd Groesbeck