Jim Baumgardner was excited to see a bit of Gettysburg history. "Oh look," he said, "it's Little Round Top." His voice echoed off the sides of the 40-foot storage container. Baumgardner, a Hanover architect, was standing on Tuesday afternoon with Scott Roland, the Hanover developer who last week bought the Gettysburg Electric Map at online auction for just more than $14,000, a move he said was made to bring the 12-ton map to Hanover. On a gray, rain-drenched Tuesday, Roland got his first look at it. "It's not as bad as I thought," he said, after a brief inspection of four metal shipping containers where the map has been held for the past few years. "Actually, it's a lot better than I thought."
The map was cut up into four pieces and placed in storage after a new visitors center was built, and the National Park Service decided not to add the map, which dates from 1963. Chief among the government's concerns is what officials say is 3 percent friable asbestos in the map's plaster coating. It was set to be destroyed until an outcry from preservationists, a waiver obtained by the Park Service and an online auction that ended on Friday. Today, it sits in storage at a site previously unnamed by the Park Service. That holding area - which site officials asked not be disclosed because of vandalism concerns - is located not up the road from the battlefield in Gettysburg, but rather in York County.
Read the rest of the story at The Evening Sun.
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