Beginning today, Historic Gettysburg-Adams County (HGAC) in cooperation with the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom (NTF) Program will be providing tours of Gettysburg’s only officially recognized Underground Railroad site where hundreds of freedom-seekers were sheltered during their escape from slavery in the years before the Civil War.
Everyone is invited to attend the one-hour tours which begin at 11 am every Saturday from May through August. Students who participate in the tour are provided with a Junior Ranger Activity Book and the opportunity to earn a National Underground Railroad Network To Freedom Junior Ranger badge.
Tours leave from the historical marker at the south end of the former Mulligan MacDuffer Adventure Golf parking lot at 1360 Baltimore Pike in Gettysburg, PA. The parking lot is at the intersection of the Baltimore Pike and the McAllister Mill Road. It is not necessary to make a reservation for the tour, and a guide will be on site regardless of the weather. Just show up for the tour and enjoy an informative, enlightening walk in the woods. Suggested donations for the tour are $5 for students and $10 for adults. The walk to the mill site next to Rock Creek from the historical marker at the parking lot is led by professional guides and is a somewhat strenuous, approximately one-half mile round trip that is mostly in the woods.
Everyone who comes on the tour will receive an NPS Underground Railroad brochure in addition to a souvenir brochure for the McAllister’s Mill Site that was created exclusively for HGAC and that is generously illustrated with a map, photographs and the art of historical artist Bradley Schmehl.
The Underground Railroad site, now a ruin with foundations and waterways still visible, was most probably one of the first stops made in Adams County by people seeking freedom on their flight north from slavery in the South. About two miles south of Gettysburg, PA and six miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line, McAllister’s Mill provided shelter to hundreds of freedom-seekers during the years leading up to the Civil War. After receiving assistance at the late 18th century grist mill, the freedom-seekers were guided north through Gettysburg into Upper Adams County to the homes of free African Americans and Quaker Abolitionists, forming critical links in one of the nation’s earliest regional networks of the Underground Railroad. Today, the property includes remnants of the mill building and related mill structures, all set amid large boulders that line Rock Creek.
On July 4, 1836, McAllister’s Mill was the site of an early and significant gathering of Pennsylvania Abolitionists. Chaired by mill owner and farmer James McAllister, Jr., the group agreed to publish bold anti-slavery principles, which were possibly ghostwritten by Gettysburg attorney and later U.S. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. This meeting led to the formation of the Adams County Anti-Slavery Society.
In 2011, the McAllister’s Mill site was accepted into the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (UGRR NTF) which is a nationwide collection of sites that have a verifiable association to the Underground Railroad. Since 2011, hundreds of visitors have taken advantage of this unique opportunity to visit a rarely seen, privately owned part of the battlefield. For more information on the Network to Freedom, please consult the NPS website at www.nps.gov/history/ugrr/.
Donations made to HGAC will support HGAC’s preservation activities including maintenance of the beautifully restored GAR Hall at 53 East Middle Street in Gettysburg. The McAllister’s Mill site is privately owned and is not open to the public. However, persons interested in the story of the Underground Railroad at the site will be able to join these tours that are conducted as fund-raisers by HGAC. For more information about the weekly tours, or to make special arrangements, please call McAllister’s Mill UGRR Tours at 717-659-8827.
The attached image shows the Junior Ranger Activity Book and the Junior Ranger Network To Freedom Badges that students can receive when they participate in the McAllister’s Mill Underground Railroad Tour.
Nothing says cultural and historical appropriation like giving tours of Underground Railroad sites and donating the generated funds from those tours to non-Black systems.