Battle of Antietam: Sharpsburg Battlefield Tour

The battle opened at dawn, about 5:30 a.m. on 17 September 1862. Union soldiers pushed into the Cornfield, an area about 250 yards deep and 400 yards wide, and the fighting there never settled: in the course of the morning the field changed hands no fewer than 15 times. This patch of corn is where the day began.

Location precision: The Cornfield's boundaries are described but not pinned; the marker shows the Cornfield Avenue area of the battlefield.

Visitor guidance: The Cornfield is part of Antietam National Battlefield.

Near the Cornfield stood the Dunker Church, a modest whitewashed building belonging to a congregation of German Baptist Brethren, built in 1852 by the local Schwarzenau Brethren community. On 18 September, the day after the battle, a truce was held in front of the church to exchange wounded and bury the dead. The original structure was destroyed in a windstorm in 1921.

Visitor guidance: The church site is part of Antietam National Battlefield.

By midday the action had shifted to the center of the Confederate line. D.H. Hill commanded about 2,500 men, less than half the number under French, in a sunken road worn down by years of wagon traffic, which formed a natural trench. Union troops finally got into position to pour enfilade fire into the Confederate line, turning it into a deadly trap. The road has been known ever since as the Bloody Lane.

Location precision: The road is on the battlefield but this route does not pin an exact spot along it; the marker is the Sunken Road area.

Visitor guidance: The Sunken Road is part of the Antietam National Battlefield tour.

At the southern end of the field, around 500 Confederate soldiers from Georgia under General Robert Toombs and Henry Benning held a bridge against the Union attack. Toombs's 450 Georgians held off 14,000 Union attackers, until Union troops charged the bridge and seized it. The three-arched bridge, 125 feet long and 12 feet wide, is one of the most photographed bridges of the Civil War.

Visitor guidance: Foot traffic is still permitted on the bridge.

The Union had 12,410 casualties at Antietam, 2,108 of them dead; Confederate casualties were 10,316, with 1,547 dead. The cemetery, commissioned in 1865, began interments in 1867. It covers 11.36 acres and holds more than 4,976 interments, 1,836 of them unidentified. Civil War burials here are Union soldiers only. The nearby visitor center has museum exhibits about the battle.

Visitor guidance: Next to Antietam National Battlefield; the nearby visitor center has museum exhibits about the battle.