Four witness trees at Gettysburg, three alive since before the battle and one deliberately not. A swamp white oak sheltered Sickles's officers before he advanced to the Peach Orchard on 2 July 1863; a black walnut on Cemetery Ridge still carries concrete poured into its trunk in 1916; a young white oak above Devil's Den looked down on Longstreet's opening assault. The fourth, the Copse of Trees at the High Water Mark, is the most famous clump of trees on the battlefield, though the park service says plainly none of it stood there in 1863.
0 / 4 visités à Gettysburg
1
The Sickles Witness Tree
Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor) · roughly 200 years · Auto tour stop 11, Trostle Farm, north side of United States Avenue
On the afternoon of 2 July 1863, Major General Daniel Sickles gathered his officers under this oak to confer before he moved. He then pushed his corps forward to the Peach Orchard, and the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg took a different shape because of it.
He picked the spot for its shade. The swamp white oak at the Trostle Farm was one of the few shaded places on that part of the field, and it is still here, beside United States Avenue at auto tour stop 11.
What makes it a witness tree rather than just an old tree near a battlefield is a drawing. The artist Charles Reed sketched the tree as it stood that day. A dated period image is the standard evidence for a Gettysburg witness tree, and this one has it.
It is not a giant, and not especially old by this map's standards. A tree-marker source puts it at roughly 175 to 220 years, which fits a tree already big enough to shelter a general's conference in 1863. A 2025 survey of the battlefield's witness trees, several of which are now dead or removed, lists this one as alive with no damage noted.
The ground is open, free and a few steps from the road. Nobody has published a girth for it yet; if you have a tape measure and a spare minute, tell us.
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2
The Copse of Trees
Chestnut Oak (Quercus montana) · not documented; the current trees postdate the 1863 battle · About 0.4 mile south of town, west side of Hancock Avenue, within the stone-walled Angle, at the base of the High Water Mark monument
None of the trees inside this fence were standing in 1863. The National Park Service says so plainly on its own page for the site, and it is the first thing to know before you walk up to what may be the most famous clump of trees at Gettysburg.
What stood here on 3 July 1863 was a small clump of bushes and trees on Cemetery Ridge. Confederate planners chose it as the visual target for Pickett's Charge, the point the whole assault was aimed at. The attack reached it, and that is as close as it came to breaking the Union line. The place has been called the High Water Mark ever since, and the monument of that name stands beside it.
So the trees are successors, not survivors. Today it is roughly half a dozen large trees, mostly chestnut oak, inside a low iron fence put up in 1887 to keep souvenir hunters from carrying the copse away. The count and the full species mix are approximate, because the sources we checked give neither exactly, and none of the trees has a published age.
Why map it at all, then? Because this is exactly where people come to stand. The copse was the landmark the charge aimed at, and it still marks the spot. The age of the wood is beside the point; the place is not. It is free, and a short walk from Hancock Avenue.
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3
General Gibbon's Walnut Tree
Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) · over 200 years · Center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, beside Weir's Battery position, just off Hancock Avenue
There is concrete inside this walnut, poured into its trunk more than a century ago, and you can still see it through a crevice at the base. In 1916 and 1917 the park filled the cavities of 33 witness trees this way. This black walnut is the only one of them still alive.
It stands on Cemetery Ridge at the centre of the Union line, the stretch Confederate troops briefly broke through during Pickett's Charge on 3 July 1863. Local tradition says Brigadier General John Gibbon was wounded near this tree during the assault. Several sources repeat that, none documents it, so treat the wounding as a story about the tree rather than a fact about it. What is documented is the tree itself, standing on the ridge through the battle.
The survey behind gettysburgwitnesstrees.com gives it more than 200 years and a trunk 284 centimetres round in 2023, up from roughly 66 centimetres across in 1906. A storm in 2021 took the top of its main trunk. It survived that too, and by the same 2023 account it still sets fruit every summer, which is a better answer than a 2008 newspaper piece that worried it was failing.
It is free to visit, just off Hancock Avenue beside the position of Weir's Battery, and a few minutes' walk from the Copse of Trees.
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4
The Devil's Den Witness Tree
White Oak (Quercus alba) · roughly 190 years · On a sharp curve on high ground above Devil's Den, across from the Smith's 4th New York Independent Battery monument
When the fighting at Devil's Den began on 2 July 1863, this white oak was a sapling, its trunk about 21 centimetres across. It is a witness to the battle, but a young one, and its interest is what it looked down on rather than its age.
What it looked down on was the opening clash of Longstreet's assault on the second day. From this high ground there is what both our sources call a balcony view: Houck's Ridge, the Slaughter Pen and the western slope of Little Round Top, the ground where about 2,400 Union troops under Birney met some 5,500 Confederates under Hood.
The evidence that it was already here is a photograph published in 1899, showing the tree established on this same spot. The survey behind gettysburgwitnesstrees.com measured it in 2023 at 411 centimetres round, more than five times its width in 1863. By the estimates in the same sources it is somewhere around 175 to 200 years old, which puts its seedling years a generation or so before the battle.
So the view is the thing, and the tree frames it. Stand beside the trunk, look out over Devil's Den, and you are looking at the same ground this oak has faced since before a shot was fired there.
It stands on a sharp curve of Sickles Avenue, across the road from the monument to Smith's 4th New York Independent Battery. Free, and a few steps from the car.
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