George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army
George Gordon Meade, Ed.

[76] it reaches George Weikert's house.¹ The ridge, so far, is, with the exception of the two small groves mentioned, smooth and unwooded, and distant from Seminary Ridge, opposite, occupied by the enemy, very nearly a mile. At George Weikert's house the continuity of the ridge is lost in a tumbled mass of rock and hill and wood, compelling an eastward bend of the Taneytown Road, and falling ruggedly towards the west for a few hundred yards in the direction of Plum Run. At the south this rough ground ends abruptly at the low spot before mentioned, from which, somewhat further on to the south, rises the base of Little Round Top. This ground is densely wooded, and between it and Plum Run lay a clearing of three hundred yards in width, a portion of the generally open country on the immediate front of Cemetery Ridge.

Devil's Den is the space enclosed by the confluence of Plum Run and a small affluent. Plum Run flows in a southeasterly course towards Little Round Top, and then, making a bend to the southwest, receives, at a short distance from there, a small tributary, Plum Run Branch, flowing from Seminary Ridge. It is a bold, rocky hill, lying between these streams; steep, like an escarpment, on its eastern face, and prolonged in a ridge-like manner towards the west. It is five hundred yards west of Little Round Top, and lower by one hundred feet than that summit. The surface on its northern extremity consists of huge rocks and bowlders, forming numerous crevices and chasms. Plum Run valley and the slopes of both of the Round Tops are covered with bowlders.

A cross-road between the Taneytown Road and the Emmettsburg Pike runs along the northern base of Devil's Den. From its crossing at Plum Run to the Peach Orchard is eleven hundred yards. For four hundred yards of this distance there were woods on the north side, and a wheat field on the south side of the road. Beyond this point the road continues for seven hundred yards to the Emmettsburg Pike, along Devil's Den Ridge, which on the north slopes down to Plum Run, and on the south to Plum Run Branch.

From Ziegler's Grove the Emmettsburg Pike runs diagonally across the valley between Cemetery and Seminary Ridges, crossing Seminary Ridge two miles from Ziegler's Grove. From the Peach Orchard to Ziegler's Grove is nearly a mile and a half. For half a mile of this distance the road runs along a ridge at right angles to the ridge of Devil's Den. The salient angle is therefore formed by