Antietam Station

After the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, soldiers’ families traveled by rail to Hagerstown or Frederick and then by horse and buggy to the site to recover the bodies of loved ones or search for survivors, beginning a constant stream of battlefield visitors that still continues. A regular Decoration Day commemoration, a forerunner of Memorial Day, began in May 1868 with a parade through Sharpsburg and the decoration of soldiers’ graves. In 1883, the Shenandoah Valley Railway reached Sharpsburg, where the small frame Sharpsburg Station welcomed visitors to town. Every Memorial Day, thousands of veterans and families passed through the station to attend parades and reunions. Soon, slate curbing and wide walkways flanked the road from the station to the cemetery, and Norway maples, some of which still survive, were planted beside the road to shade veterans and their families. Fire destroyed Sharpsburg Station in 1910, and the next year the Norfolk & Western Railway completed the present freight and passenger station in time for the 50th anniversary of the battle. Veterans also returned for the 75th anniversary in 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended the huge reenactment. The station, renamed Antietam after two trains collided when engineers confused the words Sharpsburg and Shepherdstown, closed late in the 1950s. A private citizen bought it and turned it around so that the bay window, which once allowed stationmasters to look up and down the tracks, faced the road.

Maryland · United States