The lonely Coster Avenue Mural at Kuhn’s Brickyard was designed by Civil War descendant Mark H. Dunkelman, who painted it together with noted muralist Johan Bjurman.

The mural was dedicated on the 125th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and it’s an important monument to the clash between Colonel Charles Coster’s Union forces and the Confederate brigade led by General Harry Hays. It is consistently identified as one of the least visited memorials in Gettysburg.

Coster’s troops were positioned as a rearguard to protect fleeing Union forces that had not fared well in the preceding battle. They found themselves almost completely unprotected and were forced to make their stand behind a modest wooden fence.

The Confederates significantly outnumbered the Union soldiers and the battle degraded into brutal hand-to-hand combat. Confederate forces, led by Hays and Colonel Isaac Avery, surrounded and killed 563 of Coster’s men while losing nearly 200 of their own.