Guide Profile: Gary Kross

This is the first in a series of biographies about the elite corps of Licensed Battlefield Guides who conduct tours on Segway Personal Transporters™ for SegTours.com.

Gary Kross

Gary Kross has been a full-time Licensed Battlefield Guide (LBG) at the Gettysburg National Military Park for 23 years (since 1986) and is one of the most popular guides at the park. He is a native of New York, studied History at Marquette University in Wisconsin, and is retired from the military.

Gary is a member of the advisory board of Blue & Gray Magazine, serves as its Associate Editor and has authored numerous special editions of that magazine about the battle of Gettysburg. He has shared his unparalleled knowledge of Gettysburg in a number of other Civil War trade journals and parts of his extensive library of maps, books, photos, and CDVs have appeared in books by other authors. Most recently, he was the guide and narrator on Stephen Recker’s Virtual Gettysburg, an interactive battlefield tour that is distributed on CD-ROM.

Gary is widely known as an authority on the tactics that were employed by both armies at Gettysburg and he is sought out by corporations to conduct leadership workshops using historical lessons and role models from the battle. A popular speaker at colleges and Civil War Round Tables, he has also been a guest lecturer at the Smithsonian Institute and the guest historian on numerous TV shows that have been aired on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, TNT, and the Travel Channel.

Gary thinks that the Segway is a great way to conduct a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield. He said, “Walking tours are generally too slow and exhaust listeners before getting too far; bus tours are too fast and don’t give guides much freedom to address individual interests. This is like my perfect tour.”

In addition to personally conducting as many Segway tours of the battlefield as possible, Gary is the guide and narrator of the audio tours that are offered by SegTours.com.  In those tours, guests are accompanied on their Segways by a staff escort while they listen to Gary describe the events and personalities on the battle through a recorded audio.

Gary likes the Segway so much that he owns one himself and might be seen gliding the streets of Gettysburg in warm weather.