Arlington National Cemetery: Final Resting Place for 300,000 Honored Americans
Serving as the final resting place to more than 300,000 Americans, including presidents and a first lady, Arlington National Cemetery is a history lesson about many of the most famous conflicts and individuals who gave their lives to secure this nation’s status as a free country.
More than four million people visit the cemetery annually, many coming to pay final respects at graveside services, of which nearly 100 are conducted each week, Monday through Friday.
Arlington Mansion and 200 acres of ground immediately surrounding it were designated officially as a military cemetery June 15, 1864, by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in part as a way to keep Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from ever occupying his mansion in the middle of the cemetery after he resigned his Union commission to command the Army of Northern Virginia.
Veterans from all the nation's wars are buried in the cemetery, from the American Revolution through the Iraq and Afghanistan. Pre-Civil War dead were reinterred after 1900.
Arlington National Cemetery has the second-largest number of people buried of any national cemetery in the United States. Arlington National Cemetery conducts approximately 6,400 burials each year.
The Tomb of the Unknowns is one of the more-visited sites at Arlington National Cemetery. The Tomb is made from Yule marble quarried in Colorado and includes remains from World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
Among the most notable Americans interred at Arlington are former president John F. Kennedy with its eternal flame; his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; and many former U.S. Supreme Court justices. Noted memorials include one each for the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle accidents; a special monument to those who died in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland; and the new Women in Military Service for America memorial at the cemetery’s entrance.
Arlington National Cemetery is open to the public at 8 a.m. 365 days a year. From April 1 to Sept. 30 the cemetery closes at 7 p.m.; the other six months it closes at 5 p.m. Although parking is available, it’s much easier to make Metrorail to the Arlington Cemetery subway station.
Posted on Jul 18, 2011 by Jim Brown
