"The National Park Service will be working with GSA to put together the details of the sale," Katie Lawhon, spokeswoman for Gettysburg National Military Park, said Thursday. "More information will follow once those details have been decided upon."
Neither the park service nor the GSA provided answers about whether the asbestos issue had been resolved.
Humble and homespun by high-tech standards, the 20-minute narrated map show provided visitors with a battle overview, charting troop movements using hundreds of electric bulbs.
The map was the creation of Joseph Rosensteel, a historian and Civil War artifact collector whose family home was the battlefield's museum for decades before the Rosensteels sold it to the park service in the 1970s.
The decision to auction the map was a victory for local preservationists, who hope someone can buy and restore it. But its creator's daughter, Emily Rosensteel O'Neil, was not pleased.
"When my family sold the museum and the map, we never expected this type of end to my father's legacy," she said. "Outdated it may be, but it was supposed to remain under the care of the Department of the Interior."
With the battle's 150th anniversary set to be observed next year, O'Neil said, she would like to see the map reborn somewhere nearby.
"I view it as part of the history of Gettysburg itself," she said. "Once you put something up to auction, you've opened up to the world. People say it was the best way to view the battle before going into the field at Gettysburg."
Contact Amy Worden at 717-783-2584 or aworden@phillynews.com.
