Mission 66: Modernizing Antietam National Battlefield

This digital tour of Antietam National Battlefield focuses on how the National Park Service's Mission 66 program transformed the ways visitors experience Civil War history. 

 Mission 66 was an ambitious national program to modernize the parks, marking the National Park Service's 50th anniversary in 1966. At Antietam, Mission 66 reimagined the ways people could view, travel through, and learn about the battlefield landscape.

“This is a Mission 66 Project.” Signs with this message became familiar to national park visitors between 1956 and 1966.

Mission 66 was a program to “modernize, enlarge, and even reinvent the park system” by 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the NPS. National parks across the country saw a massive increase in visitors after World War II: from 6 million in 1942 to 30 million in 1950 alone. At the same time, maintaining the parks was not a wartime priority. They were in no condition to serve so many visitors. To address this crisis, Congress spent over $1 billion for the expansion of buildings, parkland, and services across the NPS over a decade. 

Antietam National Battlefield was one place where the Mission 66 program forever changed how visitors experience the park. Congress established Antietam National Battlefield in 1890 to commemorate the September 17, 1862, Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle in American History and a major turning point in the American Civil War.

In the 1890s, the War Department focused on identifying troop movements and important sites, erecting iron signs, and purchasing land for roads. The NPS took over management of the battlefield in 1933. By the 1950s, Antietam faced serious problems: Dunker Church was a ruin, suburban growth threatened the landscape and views, and visitors started their tours in a tiny museum in the Lodge of the National Cemetery.

The Mission 66 program’s vision and funding sparked improvements to the battlefield that were decades in the making. First, Congress passed an act in 1960 (74 Stat. 79) to purchase land to protect Antietam. This allowed the NPS to enlarge the battlefield and cemetery from 195 acres to 790 acres, with an additional 42 acres in scenic easements. This was vital to preserve the site and views of the battle.

Next, the NPS dramatically transformed Antietam from 1960 and 1967. Under Mission 66, the 19th century battlefield gained 20th century roads, interactive exhibits, and preserved and restored historic places. The centerpiece was the Visitor Center: built into a hillside overlooking the battlefield, its architecture is an excellent example of the “Park Service Modern” style created during Mission 66. 

The map below shows an overview of the project discussed in this StoryMap. Click on the points to learn about them.