Sculpted by Gary Casteel
 
1863 Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Monument Replicas
 
On the afternoon of July 1, 1863, the Union 1st and 11th Corps defended Oak Ridge from repeated Confederate assaults.  By 4:00 p.m., with no help in sight, the Federal troops were forced to fall back to Cemetery Hill, the high ground outside of Gettysburg.  Prior to falling back, Division commander Brig. Gen. John Robinson rode up to Col. Charles W. Tilden and ordered him to hold his position at any cost.  Robinson wanted the 298 men of the 16th Maine to delay the Confederate advance long enough to give the rest of his division time to retreat.  “All right, General, we’ll do the best we can,” Tilden said. Robinson wheeled and spurred his horse, which jumped over a stone wall and carried the general toward Gettysburg. Tilden turned back to his men. “You know what that means,” he said.  “Yes, the regiment knew what it meant,” remembered Frank Wiggin, then a sergeant in Co. H. “It meant death or capture, and every man realized it perfectly.” 
 
The Mainers stubbornly held their ground on Oak Ridge until forced back to the railroad cut where they were surrounded. The last, desperate stand did not last long, probably no more than 20 minutes.  As the Confederates pushed closer on two sides and the surviving men of the 16th Maine realized they were most likely going to die or be captured, thoughts turned to keeping the regimental flags from falling into enemy hands.  
 
Capt. S. Clifford Belcher, a Bowdoin College graduate who had just started practicing law in Belfast when he joined the 16th Maine, received the approval of the other officers and ordered the staffs broken, the flags torn to shreds, and the pieces distributed to the men in the regiment. The soldiers hid them away beneath their shirts or in their pockets. ““We looked at our colors, and our faces burned,” wrote adjutant Abner Small.  “We must not surrender those symbols of our pride and our faith.”  He noted in 1889 that “These fragments were carried through Southern prisons and finally home to Maine, where they are still treasured as precious relics more than a quarter century after Gettysburg.” 
 
While the regiment shredded their beloved colors to keep them from enemy hands, Col. Tilden thrust his sword into the ground, breaking it at the hilt.  Col. Tilden was one of the men taken prisoner. Taken back to Virginia, he was one of the 109 men who managed to use a tunnel to escape from Richmond’s Libby Prison in early 1864. He returned to his regiment, only to be captured a second time, but he managed to escape once again. 
 
The 16th Maine’s total losses were around 80%, (11 dead, 59 wounded, and 164 captured). What remained of the regiment stumbled back through the town of Gettysburg and the relative safety of Cemetery Hill.  All but 57 men were captured, killed, or wounded during the battle. Their determined stand bought time for others to retreat.
 
The monument was dedicated in 1889 and is located at the intersection of Doubleday Avenue and Mummasburg Road, on the right when traveling south on Doubleday Avenue.