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Tour Stop 9
The Burnside Bridge
Known as the Rohrbach Bridge before the battle, it was renamed for General Ambrose Burnside who commanded the Union soldiers who fought to take this crucial Antietam crossing during the battle. This bridge is one of several bridges that Washington County constructed as part of a project that spanned a 40 year period.
Designed and built by John Weaver at a cost of $2,300, the bridge connected Sharpsburg with Rohrersville, the next town to the south. It was completed in 1836 and was actively used for traffic until 1966. In an effort to preserve the bridge, a bypass was built to take cars across a new bridge upstream. At the same time, the four monuments that had been mounted on the bridge were removed and relocated to the east bank. The wooden coping was restored and the asphalt removed.
Just off to your right is the McKinley Monument, dedicated to the 24th President. William McKinley was a commissary Sergeant with the 23rd Ohio of Colonel Hugh Ewing's Brigade. During the battle, Sergeant McKinley bravely served the soldiers in his regiments in the fields to your right.
After the war, McKinley served as a Congressman and Governor of Ohio. He was twice elected as President before he was shot by Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901. The President survived for eight days before succumbing to his wound on September 14th. Just over a year before his death McKinley was here for the dedication of the Maryland State Monument, near the visitor center.
President John F. Kennedy toured Antietam on April 7, 1963. He wrote that "Antietam symbolizes something even more important than combat heroism and military strategy. It marks a diplomatic turning point of world-wide consequences. From this point onward our Civil War had a new dimension which was important to the whole course of human history." |