Gettysburg National Military Park
A place honoring the greatest battlefield of the Civil War; the reverse bears an infantry monument.
Gettysburg National Military Park is a place in the state of Pennsylvania that preserves the site where the fiercest battle of the Civil War was fought. So as not to forget but to remember the painful history of a nation split in two and at war with itself, that old battlefield has been left just as it was.
The reverse of the coin depicts the “72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Monument.” It is the image of a monument erected to honor a unit that took part in the battle.
This monument was raised to remember the soldiers who fought on that spot, and it is one of the many monuments erected throughout the Gettysburg battlefield. The monument on the coin conveys together the sacrifice of war and the desire not to forget it.
Gettysburg began to be protected on February 11, 1895, and has long guarded the traces of the battle and its monuments. It is a place left not to boast of victory or defeat, but in the hope that such pain would never come again.
When you look at the monument on the coin, you quietly reflect on what happened here. In effect, a small quarter connects you to a heavy scene of American history.