Nation: This Hallowed Ground

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Defacing a public monument is a crime in France; the idea is worth borrowing and extending to cover such assaults as the Disney scheme to turn California's Mineral King mountain fastness into a tourist development, or the perennial proposal to build a highway through the Grand Canyon. Anyone approaching the national battlefield military park at Gettysburg runs a gauntlet of gaudy billboards, and now Tom Ottenstein, a developer from Silver Spring, Md., is going ahead with plans to build a 300-ft. sightseeing tower on an acre of private land not far from the Gettysburg National Cemetery. It will be topped with a "space capsule" faced in tinted glass and blue enamel, on the doubtful theory that it will thus blend with the sky. History buffs from as far away as Texas have protested, but Ottenstein remains undeterred. Gettysburg is unzoned and Ottenstein already has the necessary building permits, so nothing stands in his way. Says George Hartzog Jr., director of the National Park Service: "Many mistakes have been made at Gettysburg, some by the park service. But of all the projects planned or carried out, this tower is the most monstrous."