Cope Truss

The Cope Truss is a tall square frustum of four structural cells used for 2 lattice towers on the Gettysburg Battlefield: Culp's Hill Observation Tower and Confederate Avenue Observation Tower. The 60 and 75 ft (18 and 23 m) high observation towers have stairways with corner landings along the interior sides to form a square helix route to the "metal observatory".^[7] The Oak Ridge Observation Tower 23 ft (7.0 m) high and without a roof is truncated to the 1st cell.^[1]

History

Preceding Gettysburg sightseeing towers included an 1878 wooden observatory on East Cemetery Hill,[2]^[8] an 1881 wooden tower on Big Round Top,^[9] and the 1893 44th New York castellated stone monument with observation deck on Little Round Top.[3] On April 30, 1895, contractors were solicited for steel War Department towers[4] [5] to support roofed observatories above the northeastern forest canopy (a 5th was contracted May 18, 1896).[6] The structures were manufactured and assembled by the Variety Iron Works of Cleveland, Ohio,[7] and the Gettysburg Battlefield tower roofs were repaired in 1914 when the structures were repainted.^[6]:'14 President Warren G. Harding used the Zeigler's Grove tower (1922),^[4] and Dwight D. Eisenhower with Omar Bradley used the Culp's Hill tower (1957).^[10] Beginning in the 1950s, the US Secret Service monitored tourists on the "Longstreet tower" along Confederate Av near the Eisenhower farm purchased in 1950.^[11]

The Zeigler's Grove Observation Tower removed in 1961 was replaced by the 1962 Cyclorama observation deck,[8] the Big Round Top Observation Tower was dismantled in 1968,^[7] and the Valley Forge tower was removed in 1988.^[12] After the 1974 opening of the private Gettysburg National Tower, a 1977 plan for removing the Gettysburg towers^[13] was not used, and the 1974 tower was instead razed in 2000. In 2002, structural maintenance included a "complete overhaul… to the historic steel and cast iron towers" for $384,675^[5] (the towers were painted in 1917 and 1926,^[6] and $45K was spent on the Culp's Hill tower in 1968).[9] The remaining 3 towers and the Big Round Top Observation Tower Foundation Ruin were "entered-documented" as historic district contributing structures in 2004.^[1]</ref>

References