Westminster Depot

Westminster Depot. Pressed into Service. During the Civil War, railroads for the first time attained strategic importance for transporting troops and equipment. On July 1, 1863, Gen. Herman Haupt, chief of U.S. Military Railroads, assumed control here of the Western Maryland Railroad to supply the army engaged at Gettysburg. He found a depot nearby as well as several large grain and flour warehouses. Two days earlier, however, after a cavalry action in the streets, hungry Confederates had raided the warehouses for food for themselves and grain for their famished horses., Haupt made a covered wagon his temporary office and quickly created a military supply depot here. Four hundred Railroad Construction Corpsmen soon arrived from Alexandria, Virginia, with lanterns, buckets and rails. They hauled water from a nearby impoundment and brought in firewood for the steam locomotives. Soon 30 trains in 5-train convoys moved 1,500 tons of supplies and ammunition in 150 cars daily from Baltimore to Westminster. Previously, the single-track line, completed in 1861, had carried only four trains a day. Within two days, the army’s needs were more than met, and excess supplies went to Gettysburg hospitals. Thousands of Union wounded and almost 7,000 Confederate prisoners passed through the Westminster depot July 1-7., Ellen Orbison Harris of the Philadelphia Ladies Aid Society wrote on July 4, “Westminster, 4 a.m., spent the night on the cars, being the only woman; and with a kind-hearted baker and his wife, had an opportunity of comforting some of our wounded with pies and cakes of their manufacture.”