Gathland State Park

Crampton's Gap on the crest of South Mountain, where the journalist George Alfred Townsend built his mountaintop estate and, in 1896, raised a 50-foot stone arch to the correspondents and artists who covered the Civil War — the only monument of its kind in the country. Ruins of Townsend's house and stable stand among the picnic tables, the Appalachian Trail passes through the gap, and interpretive panels tell the story of the September 1862 fighting here. A natural pairing with Washington Monument State Park a few miles north on the same ridge.