Finding Maryland Monuments at Antietam

Excluding the Maryland State Monument, there are nine monuments at Antietam National Battlefield that mark the approximate battlefield position of military units from Maryland.  Finding Maryland monuments at Antietam is not hard, but if your goal is to find them all in one battlefield tour, a little planning is required. This is mostly because two of the monuments are in the far south portion of the battlefield and the others stand in unassuming (and sometimes surprising) locations.

9 Maryland Military Unit Monuments

All but one of the Maryland regimental and artillery monuments are simple, largely uniform, eighteen-inch-square rough-cut granite structures that stand anywhere from three- to five-feet tall. The lone stand-out is the 5th MD Infantry’s monument for Companies A and I, which has an obelisk shape and stands almost 9-feet tall.

The seal of the State of Maryland is mounted on every monument, and seven of these seals have oxidized (to give the bronze a bluish-green color). Except for the inscriptions, the two Maryland Confederate monuments are indistinguishable from the seven Maryland Union monuments. The monuments are listed in the following table.

Note: If your screen is narrow, scroll or swipe the table to view all columns.

Can you find the monuments (above) at Antietam National Battlefield using the following maps? Give it a try!

Finding Maryland Monuments at Antietam

For each statue’s photograph, find its location on the map. (Or you could do it the other way around: For each map location, find the associated statue photograph.) The following sections provide the maps and photographs.

Maps

Antietam Battlefield North of Town

Antietam Battlefield South of Town

Photos

Route Planning

Finally, it’s time to plan a bicycle route that passes each Maryland monument. For finding Maryland monuments at Antietam, you have everything that you need right here!

Northern Half of Antietam Battlefield

For the northern half of the battlefield, you can visit most Maryland monuments by following the National Park Service Auto Tour. First, the 3rd MD Infantry Monument is on Dunker Church Road near the Visitor Center exit and near Auto Tour Stop 1. Follow Dunker Church Road north past Auto Tour Stop 1, and continue until the road bears right into the North Woods (Auto Tour Stop 2) and then south again to the East Woods (Auto Tour Stop 3). Pass the Battery B, MD 1st Light Artillery Monument on your right.

Then, at Dunker Church Road, turn left toward the West Woods, heading south. Turn right into the West Woods (Philadelphia Park) to visit the Baltimore Battery (CSA) Monument. Turn around to get back to Dunker Church Road, where you will turn right and then left onto Smoketown Road.

Make your first right onto Mumma Lane to visit the Battery A, MD 1st Light Artillery Monument on the corner.  Follow signs to Auto Tour Stops 6, 7, and 8. The two MD 5th Infantry monuments are along the Sunken Road (Richardson Avenue) on the left.

Southern Half of Antietam Battlefield

For the southern half of the battlefield, you will likely want to visit the MD 2nd Infantry Monument on a hike around the east side of Antietam Creek near Burnside Bridge.

The 1st MD Artillery (CSA) Monument is in a remote part of the battlefield, on the east side of Harper’s Ferry Road. Your options are to either visit this monument by car, or design a bicycle route that includes riding on non-park roads. (There is a wide bicycle lane into downtown Sharpsburg, but once in town, traffic is congested but often slow-moving. As of this writing, sidewalks are very narrow and bumpy.)