The historic Antietam National Battlefield is documented and remembered
in this collection of mailable vintage-photograph postcards.
Approximately 110,000 soldiers of the Union and Confederate armies
fought along the banks of Antietam Creek in the bloodiest single-day
battle in American history. In 12 hours of fighting, approximately
23,000 men fell, either killed, wounded, or missing, forever scarring
the landscape around the town of Sharpsburg. Established as the Antietam
Battlefield Site in 1890, Antietam National Battlefield became a
National Park Service landmark in 1933. The park grew from 33 acres in
the 1890s to encompassing over 3,000 acres today. Some of the Civil
War's most recognizable landmarks now sit within its boundaries,
including Dunker Church, Bloody Lane, and Burnside Bridge. The events
that occurred across the fields and woodlots around Sharpsburg and along
Antietam Creek bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to Antietam
National Battlefield every year.