Gettysburg Changed the Way I See America
There are certain places you visit that you know you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
For me, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is now one of those places.
Before coming into Pennsylvania, my brother, Arturo Cantu, and I had been working our way through Upstate New York. Eventually, the road brought us south into Pennsylvania, through places like Mount Joy and Altoona.
But when we looked at our route and saw one particular name, we immediately got excited:
Gettysburg.
Arturo and I are history fanatics. We’ve read about Gettysburg. We’ve watched documentaries about Gettysburg. We knew the significance of those three days in July 1863.
But knowing about a place and standing on the ground where it happened are two completely different things.
The People of Gettysburg
We arrived in Gettysburg on Saturday night, with our meat sale scheduled for Sunday.
From the beginning, the people treated us incredibly well.
Almost every customer who came through heard the same thing from us: “We’re from South Texas. We’ve never been here before. We’re huge history fans. What do we need to see?”
And people started giving us recommendations.
One piece of advice stood out. Instead of simply taking a tour and being shown everything, they encouraged us to explore some of it ourselves.
So that’s what we did.
And I'm glad we listened.
Walking the Battlefield at Night
Arturo and I actually visited the battlefield twice.
The first time was at night.
We walked the trails, saw the monuments and tried to imagine what this peaceful place must have looked and sounded like during those three days of fighting.
Then we went back the next morning.
In daylight, we could really see the terrain.
The hills.
The woods.
The rocks.
The open fields.
Little Round Top.
Devil’s Den.
And the stone wall.
Of everything we saw in Gettysburg, that stone wall affected me the most.
The Stone Wall
It’s difficult to explain what goes through your mind when you're standing next to something you've previously only associated with history.
You can touch the stones.
You can stand behind the wall.
And then it hits you:
Men once stood behind this wall knowing their lives depended on what happened next.
Today, we can walk away from it, get back into our vehicle and continue with our lives.
They couldn't.
For them, this wasn't a monument. It wasn't a tourist attraction. It wasn't something in a history book.
It was survival.
Standing there made me think about the human instinct to survive—the determination these men must have had and the reality of knowing that the person beside you might not be there a few minutes later.
It made the history feel human.
They Were Anything but Primitive
Arturo and I talked about Gettysburg for a long time afterward.
One thing kept coming up in our conversation: the intelligence behind what we were seeing.
Sometimes I think we make the mistake of looking at people who lived more than 160 years ago and subconsciously thinking of them as primitive.
They didn't have the internet.
They didn't have GPS.
They didn't have drones, satellites or instant communication.
But walk the battlefield at Gettysburg and look at the terrain.
Look at the positions.
Look at the defensive structures.
Think about how information had to travel and how commanders had to understand elevation, distance, visibility, movement and timing.
You quickly realize these were incredibly capable people making extraordinarily complicated decisions under circumstances that are difficult for us to imagine today.
Arturo and I kept looking at each other almost in disbelief.
How did they figure all of this out?
Two Texans Walking Their Trail
One part of the experience had another connection for us.
Arturo and I are South Texas boys.
During our exploring, we walked trails associated with Confederate troops from Texas and Alabama as they moved across this terrain during the battle.
Whatever you know from a map suddenly becomes different when you're physically walking the ground.
We weren't looking at a line drawn in a history book anymore.
We were looking at the rocks they had to cross.
The woods they moved through.
The elevation they faced.
And the distance they had to cover.
As Texans and history lovers, being able to physically walk some of that terrain was something neither one of us will forget.
A Different Appreciation for Our Country
I left Gettysburg looking at America differently.
When we talk about people making the ultimate sacrifice, those words can sometimes become so familiar that we forget what they actually mean.
Gettysburg gave those words a different meaning for me.
Thousands of Americans were killed over those three days, and many thousands more were wounded or captured. They were fighting one another during the darkest conflict in our country's history.
Standing where they stood forces you to confront the human cost behind the history.
I walked away with a deeper appreciation for the country we live in and for what generations before us endured.
Pennsylvania Through the Eyes of Two South Texans
Gettysburg wasn't the only thing that surprised us about Pennsylvania.
Coming from South Texas, this entire landscape feels different.
Everything is green.
There are mountains, rolling hills, valleys, forests and roads cutting through scenery that sometimes makes Arturo and me simply look around and take it in.
And I've caught myself thinking something while we've been here:
I hope the people who live here still see it.
When you wake up around something every day, I imagine it becomes normal.
But to somebody seeing Pennsylvania for the first time, there is nothing normal about it.
It's beautiful.
Sometimes maybe it takes somebody from somewhere else to remind you that the view you've seen a thousand times is a view somebody else traveled across the country and couldn't stop staring at.
And the Journey Continues
That's one of the reasons I've grown to love what we do.
Yes, we're here to work.
We came to Pennsylvania to hold our events, meet customers and make a living.
But somewhere along the road, I've realized that the road is giving us something in return.
It's introducing us to people we never would have met.
It's taking us through towns we may never have visited.
It's teaching us pieces of American history that no documentary could ever make us feel quite the same way.
And it's giving my brother and me memories that we'll probably be talking about when we're old men.
Today, we're in Chambersburg.
Next, we're headed to Waynesboro.
And after everything Pennsylvania has already shown us, I'm excited to see what else is waiting down the road.
To the people of Gettysburg and everyone we've met throughout Pennsylvania: thank you for welcoming a couple of South Texas cowboys into your communities.
We can't wait to come back.
Until the next stop—follow the herd.
A Cowboy’s Journey
Cornerstone Cowboy Beef Company
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