Rock Creek-White Run Union Hospital Complex

Rock Creek and White Run, southeast of Gettysburg in Adams County, Pennsylvania, hold a cluster of farmsteads and open fields that served as Union corps hospitals from early July 1863. The Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth and Twelfth Corps, along with First Corps sites, treated thousands of wounded here. The Jacob Schwartz farm alone received nearly 3,300 wounded, close to 1,000 of them Confederates. Roughly 10,000 men were treated within the district, making it the largest concentrated area of battle-wound treatment at Gettysburg. Patients were sheltered in farmhouses, barns and outbuildings, and in tents set up in the fields. Surviving farm buildings from the battle era, the open landscape and the convergence of the creeks remain largely intact. The district is significant for its military history and for its record of wartime health care, and it also illustrates the strain the battle placed on local farms and residents.