The farm of George and Dorothy Rose is located on the east side of the Emmitsburg Road, about two miles south of Gettysburg. Rose was a butcher from Germantown and purchased the farm in 1858. At the time of the battle, it is thought that Rose’s brother John and his wife and seven children were living at the farm.
The Rose Farm saw some of the war’s most terrible fighting on July 2 as the fighting swirled in and around the farm’s wheat field. Between 500 and 1,000 Confederate soldiers were buried on the property, and Alexander Gardner took some of the most famous photographs of the battle’s dead near the farm house. The barn burned in 1910; the house came into the National Park Service in the 1950s. The farm is normally publicly accessible via the farm lane, but is currently undergoing rehabilitation and is closed to the public as of 2023-2024 with no current reopening date.
