Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery was established on 13 May 1864, during the American Civil War. It was named after Arlington Estate, the land on which the cemetery was built. This land had been confiscated by the U.S. federal government from the private ownership of Confederate States Army general Robert E. Lee's family following a tax dispute over the property. The cemetery is managed by the U.S. Department of the Army. As of 2024, it conducts approximately 27 to 30 funerals each weekday and between six and eight services on Saturday, or 141 to 158 per week.

In April 2014, Arlington National Cemetery Historic District, including Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington House, Memorial Drive, the Military Women's Memorial, and Arlington Memorial Bridge, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

History

19th century

In 1802, George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of George Washington's wife Martha through her first marriage, began building Arlington House on a property, Arlington Plantation, that he inherited from John Parke Custis, his natural father, following his death. Custis went to live at Mount Vernon where George Washington and Martha raised him as their own son.

In 1804, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh. They had four children, but only one, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived into adulthood. On 30 June 1831, she married U.S. Army 2nd Lieutenant Robert E. Lee (future Confederate States Army general).

In 1818, Arlington House was completed. Custis initially intended the house to serve as a home and memorial to George Washington, his foster father, but Washington died on 14 December 1799, before construction began. Custis' will granted a life inheritance of the house to his wife, allowing her to live at and run Arlington House for the rest of her life but prohibiting her from selling any portion of it. In 1826 Custis acknowledged Maria Carter Syphax as his daughter and freed her, along with her 10 children and provided them with 17 acres of the Arlington Plantation. Following his wife's death, Arlington House, then known as the Custis-Lee Mansion, was passed on to her eldest grandson, George Washington Custis Lee.

American Civil War

In April 1861, following the Confederate States Army bombing of Fort Sumter in the Battle of Fort Sumter and the Union army's subsequent surrender of the fort, the American Civil War was launched, and Virginia promptly seceded from the Union. Virginia's secession left the national capital of Washington, D.C., directly across the Potomac River from Arlington Plantation in what was then Virginia's Alexandria County, highly vulnerable to Confederate attack and occupation. Realizing this, on 15 April, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers from around the Union to help defend the capital.

On 20 April, Robert E. Lee, embracing the cause of Virginia's separation from the Union, resigned his U.S. Army commission to lead Virginia's separatist armed forces. The following year, on 1 June 1862, Lee was appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederate Army's primary military force.

When the Civil War commenced, American military personnel who died in battle near Washington, D.C., were buried at the United States Soldiers' Cemetery in Washington, D.C., or Alexandria Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia. By late 1863, however, both cemeteries were nearly full.

On 3 May 1861, General Winfield Scott ordered Brigadier General Irvin McDowell to clear all troops not loyal to the Union from Arlington and neighboring Alexandria. On 7 May 1861, however, the Confederate-aligned Virginia militia captured Arlington and Arlington House. With Confederate forces occupying the high ground of Arlington, the neighboring national capital in Washington, D.C. was left vulnerable to Confederate Army attack.

Despite not wanting to leave Arlington House, Mary Lee believed her estate would soon be recaptured by Union soldiers. On 14 May, she buried many of her family treasures on the grounds, and then left for her sister's estate at Ravensworth in present-day Fairfax County, Virginia. Some of the personal property she buried included family portraits that were stolen by Union soldiers. McDowell occupied Arlington without opposition on 24 May.

On 16 July 1862, the U.S. Congress passed legislation authorizing the U.S. federal government to purchase land for national cemeteries for the purpose of burying military dead, and placed the U.S. Army Quartermaster General in charge of this program.

Beginning in 1863, the federal government used the southern portion of the land now occupied by the cemetery as a settlement for freed slaves, giving the land the name "Freedman's Village". The government constructed rental houses that 1,100 to 3,000 freed slaves eventually occupied while farming 1,100 acres (450 ha) of the estate and receiving schooling and occupational training, both during the Civil War and after its end.

In May 1864, the Union Army suffered large fatalities in the Battle of the Wilderness. Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs ordered a review of eligible sites for the establishment of a large and new national military cemetery. Within weeks, his staff reported that Arlington Estate was the most suitable property in the area. The property was located at a relatively high elevation and was typically free from floods capable of unearthing graves, and it was aesthetically pleasing. An additional factor in its selection was likely that it was the residence of Robert E. Lee, a leader in the Confederate States Army, and denying Lee use of his home during and following the war was advantageous to the Union.

On 13 May 1864, William Henry Christman was buried at Arlington Cemetery, close to what is now the northeast gate in Section 27, even though Meigs did not formally authorize establishment of burials until the following month, on 15 June 1864. Consistent with the practices of many cemeteries in the late 19th century, Arlington Cemetery maintained segregated burial practices. On 26 July 1948, however, U.S. president Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which formally reversed this practice.

In 1864, with the Civil War still ongoing, the Union acquired Arlington Cemetery for $26,800, equivalent to $551,681 in 2025, after the property was placed for tax sale. Mrs. Lee did not appear in person for the tax sale, but sent an agent, who attempted to pay the $92.07 allegedly owed in property taxes, equivalent to $1,895 in 2025, which had been assessed on the estate. The Union government, however, turned her agent away, and refused to accept the tendered payment. The Washington Chronicle described the Freedmen's Village at Arlington in an article published in September 1864 and recorded at that time, "This cemetery is at present divided into the upper yard and the lower yard. The upper yard contains fourteen hundred graves, and the lower twelve hundred. These graves are marked with wooden slabs, with the exception of one marble slab in the upper and one in the lower yard. As we passed by it, a cortege of five ambulances, containing nine coffins, moved by. Some of the coffins were draped with our colors. The cemetery is as yet enclosed with a wooden fence."

In 1866, The Old Bell Church, led by Rev. Robert S. Laws, was founded. After Freedman's Village became part of a military reservation, the government asked the villagers to leave. In 1887, however, some still remained, and John A. Commerford, the Superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, asked the U.S. Army's Quartermaster General to close the village on the grounds that people living in it had been taking trees at night from the cemetery for use as firewood. The Quartermaster General and the Secretary of War then approved Commerford's request.

U.S. v. Lee

In 1874, George Washington Custis Lee sued the U.S. federal government, claiming ownership of the Arlington Cemetery grounds. On 9 December 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Lee's favor in United States v. Lee, concluding that the U.S. government seized Arlington Cemetery and its surrounding grounds without affording Lee due process.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Congress abided by the Supreme Court ruling, and returned the estate to Lee. By this time, however, Lee was less interested in obtaining the property than in receiving cash compensation for it. On 3 March 1883, Custis Lee sold it back to the U.S. government for $150,000 (equivalent to $4,397,727 in 2025) at a signing ceremony with then Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln. The land then became a U.S. military reservation.

20th century

In 1900, the last remaining residents of the Freedman's village departed after the 56th United States Congress appropriated $75,000 (equivalent to $2,902,500 in 2025) to settle the U.S. government's debts to them. With limited space but large numbers of KIAs from World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, along with natural deaths from high-ranking military officials, the need for additional burial space at Arlington Cemetery became a challenge and priority to the U.S. government.

On 30 May 1929, U.S. President Herbert Hoover conducted the first national Memorial Day ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery.

In October 1991, John C. Metzler Jr., Arlington Cemetery's superintendent, implemented a $1.4 million plan to clear a former 13-acre (5.3 ha) parking lot to create additional space that would accommodate approximately 9,000 additional grave sites.

Wreaths Across America

In 1992, the Worcester Wreath company in Harrington, Maine, had a surplus at the end of the Christmas holiday season. Recalling a boyhood trip to Arlington National Cemetery, company founder Morrill Worcester donated 5,000 wreaths to the cemetery to honor the cemetery's dead with the help of volunteers and a local trucking company. In 2005, after 13 years of similar donations, a photo of snowy gravestones covered with wreaths at the cemetery received widespread circulation on the internet. Thousands of people called Worcester Wreath Company, wanting to replicate the wreath-laying service at their own veteran cemeteries. In 2014, volunteers were able to place wreaths in all sections of the cemetery for the first time.

On 22 February 1995, officials of the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Department of the Army signed an agreement to transfer from Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, to the U.S. Army a part of Arlington Woods, which was located in Section 29 of the National Park Service at Arlington National Cemetery between Arlington House and Fort Myer. The property transfer, which involved 12 acres (4.9 ha) of NPS land, was intended to permit superintendent Metzler to start expanding the cemetery beyond its existing boundaries.

In September 1996, Arlington Cemetery received the authority to transfer 12 acres (4.9 ha) of woodland from the National Park Service-controlled Arlington House in 2001, 37 acres (15 ha) of land in 1999 from the DoD that was the site of the Navy Annex building, 8 acres (3.2 ha) of land in 1999 from the Department of the Army that was part of Fort Myer, 4 acres (1.6 ha) of land from Arlington County's Southgate Road right-of-way in 2004, and just under 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land from Fort Myer in 2005.

On 23 September 1996, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 (Public Law 104–201) authorized the Secretary of the Interior to transfer to the Secretary of the Army all of the land in Section 29 that was within an "Arlington National Cemetery Interment Zone" and some of the land in the Section that was within a "Robert E. Lee Memorial Preservation Zone".

On 5 March 1998, the National Park Service, a component of the Department of the Interior, informed the National Capital Planning Commission that it wanted to transfer only 4 acres (1.6 ha) to the cemetery, rather than the 12 acres (4.9 ha) that the 1995 agreement had described. In response, Metzler stated: "I was surprised. But we will continue to work with the Department of Interior and see what happens."

On 12 July 1999, the National Park Service published a Federal Register notice, announcing the availability of an environmental assessment for the transfer. The EA stated that the Interment Zone contained the oldest and largest tract of climax eastern hardwood forest in Arlington County. This forest was the same type that once covered the Arlington estate, and had regenerated from trees that were present historically. A forestry study determined that a representative tree was 258 years old. The Interment Zone was also determined to contain significant archeological and cultural landscape resources, in addition to those in the Preservation Zone. The EA described four alternative courses of action.

In contrast to the National Park Service's March 1998 statement to the National Capital Planning Commission, the 1999 environmental assessment stated that the preferred alternative (Alternative 1) would transfer to the cemetery approximately 9.6 acres (3.9 ha), comprising most of the Interment Zone and the northern tip of the Preservation Zone. Another alternative (Alternative 3) would transfer to the cemetery the 12 acres (4.9 ha) Interment Zone, while keeping the 12.5 acres (5.1 ha) Preservation Zone under NPS jurisdiction. The EA concluded: "Public Law 104-201 directed the Secretary of the Interior to transfer to the Secretary of the Army jurisdiction over the Interment Zone, which is the plan in Alternative 3. Adoption of any of the other alternatives would require legislative action to amend the existing law."

In 1998, a Congressional proposal to expand the cemetery onto land that the Navy Annex and Fort Myer then occupied led to concerns that Arlington County officials had not been properly consulted, leading to the withdrawal of the proposal. However, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (Public Law 106–65), which was enacted into law during October 1999, subsequently required the Secretary of Defense to transfer administrative jurisdiction of the 36 acres (15 ha) Navy Annex property to the Secretary of the Army. The Act required the Secretary of Defense to demolish the Annex's buildings and prepare the property for use as part of the cemetery, while requiring the Secretary of the Army to incorporate the Annex property into the cemetery.

21st century

On 28 December 2001, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (Public Law 107-107) repealed the "obsolete" part of Public Law 104-201 that had authorized the transfer of portions of Section 29 to the Secretary of the Army. The new legislation required the Secretary of the Interior to transfer to the Secretary of the Army within 30 days the approximately 12 acres (4.9 ha) Interment Zone. The transfer therefore involved the entire 12 acres (4.9 ha) of NPS land that the 1995 agreement and Alternative 3 in the 1999 EA had described.

The 2001 legislation required the Secretary of the Army to use the Interment Zone for in-ground burial sites and columbarium. In addition, the legislation required the Secretary of the Interior to manage the remainder of Section 29 "in perpetuity to provide a natural setting and visual buffer for Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial."

In 2007, Metzler implemented the Millennium Project, a $35 million expansion plan to begin utilizing the Arlington woodland, Fort Myer, and Navy Annex land. The project also included converting 40 acres (16 ha) of unused space and 4 acres (16,000 m²) of maintenance property on the cemetery grounds into burial space in 2006 and 2007 to allow an additional 26,000 graves and 5,000 inurnments. The Millennium Project expanded the cemetery's physical boundaries for the first time since the 1960s, and was the largest expansion of burial space at the site since the U.S. Civil War. Several environmental and historical preservation groups criticized Metzler's plans, as did the NPS and the manager of Arlington House.

2010 mismanagement controversy

On 9 June 2010, United States Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh reprimanded the cemetery's superintendent, John C. Metzler, Jr., and his deputy, Thurman Higgenbotham, after a DOD inspector general's report revealed that cemetery officials had placed the wrong headstones on tombs, buried coffins in shallow graves, and buried bodies on top of one another. Metzler, who had already announced his intention to retire, admitted some mistakes had been made but denied allegations of widespread or serious mismanagement. The investigation also found that cemetery employees were burdened in their day-to-day work by "dysfunctional management, lack of established policy and procedures, and an overall unhealthy organizational climate." Both Metzler and Higgenbotham retired soon after the investigation commenced.

In March 2011, as a result of the problems discovered, Kathryn Condon, the recently appointed executive director of the Army National Military Cemeteries, announced that the cemetery's staff had been increased from 102 to 159. She added that the cemetery was also acquiring additional equipment because, "They didn't have the proper equipment to do the job really to the standard they needed to do."

The mismanagement controversy included a limitation on mass media access to funerals, which also proved controversial. Until 2005, the cemetery's administration gave free access, with the family's permission, to the press to cover funerals at the cemetery. In July 2008, The Washington Post reported that the cemetery had imposed gradually increasing restrictions on media coverage of funerals beginning three years earlier, in 2005.

After the cemetery's management controversy began to end, the Army appointed Patrick K. Hallinan the acting superintendent of the cemetery in June 2010. He was promoted permanently to the position in October 2010. Hallinan had previously worked for the Office of Field Programs in the National Cemetery Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Veterans' Affairs. In that capacity, Hallinan had oversight of 131 national cemeteries, national cemetery policy, procedures, and operations. Hallinan was promoted to executive director of the Army National Military Cemeteries upon the retirement of Kathryn Condon in spring 2014.

In May 2014, Hallinan stepped down and was replaced by Jack E. Lechner, Jr. as superintendent of the cemetery. Lechner had been a funeral director for 10 years in the private sector before joining the U.S. Army. He rose to the rank of colonel, and retired in November 2011 after having spent 2008 to 2010 as chief of the Supply Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, overseeing the equipping security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2010, he served as executive officer and deputy superintendent of the cemetery under Hallinan.

In September 2008, environmentalists expressed concerns that the agreement would result in the partial destruction of the 24-acre (9.7 ha) remnant of a historically important stand of native trees. A historical marker near the woodland notes that, while visiting Arlington House in 1825, Marquis de Lafayette, the French volunteer to the Continental Army who ultimately became one of George Washington's long-standing friends, warned Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, wife of George Washington Parke Custis, "Cherish these forest trees around your mansion. Recollect how much easier it is to cut a tree than to make one grow." The marker notes that the Virginia Native Plant Society recognized the woodland as being one of the best examples of old growth terraced gravel forest remaining in Virginia.

On 12 December 2012, the United States Army Corps of Engineers asked for comments on a draft environmental assessment that described a further expansion of Arlington National Cemetery as part of the Millennium Project.

The 2012 draft environmental assessment was intended to implement conversion into burial space of the 17 acres (6.9 ha) of Fort Myer grounds and 10 acres (4.0 ha) of Section 29 woodland. The draft described seven alternatives. The preferred alternative (Alternative E) called for the removal of about one-half of the 1,700 trees with a diameter of 6 inches (15 cm) or greater on the site. About 640 of the trees were within a 135-year-old portion of Arlington Woods. The draft concluded, "Based on the evaluation of environmental impacts....., no significant impacts would be expected from the Proposed Action; therefore, an Environmental Impact Statement will not be prepared and a Finding of No Significant Impact will be prepared and signed."

In January 2013, the county manager of Arlington County, Virginia, and the executive director of the Army National Military Cemeteries (consisting of Arlington National Cemetery and the United States Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Arlington County Board and the Department of the Army to expand the cemetery even further. Under the tentative plan, Arlington County would give up the easement for Southgate Road (which lies between the Navy Annex property and the cemetery's 2012 boundary), and obtain a narrow easement along the southwest border of the Navy Annex site for a new Southgate Road. In exchange, the Department of Defense would give the Navy Annex parking lot to the county.

The Army would also transfer land west of South Joyce Street to Columbia Pike to Arlington County. Additionally, the Commonwealth of Virginia would convey to the cemetery roughly the northern half of the Virginia Department of Transportation land bounded by South Joyce Street, Columbia Pike, and South Washington Boulevard. The cloverleaf interchange between Columbia Pike and S. Washington Blvd. would be eliminated, and the hairpin turn in Columbia Pike straightened, to provide a safer, more natural exit from S. Washington Blvd. onto Columbia Pike. Although exact acreages were not specified and the plan depended upon the Commonwealth of Virginia's cooperation, the MOU if implemented would have created a more contiguous plot of land for the cemetery.

On 12 March 2013, the Corps of Engineers released a revised environmental assessment for the Millennium Project.

The revised environmental assessment included copies of a number of public comments on the draft that criticized the project and parts of the assessment while proposing alternative locations for new military burials near the cemetery and elsewhere. However, the Department of Forestry of the Commonwealth of Virginia found that, based on information in the draft environmental assessment, the project would not have a significant adverse impact on the Commonwealth's forest resources. The revised EA did not change the preferred alternative (Alternative E) or the Army's plans to prepare and sign the Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) that the draft EA had described.

On 26 March 2013, the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 (Public Law 113–6) appropriated to the DoD $84 million to plan, design and construct the Millennium Project. The legislation additionally appropriated to the DoD $19 million to study, plan and design a future expansion of the cemetery's burial space.

On 5 June 2013, after reviewing 100 public comments that it had received on the revised environmental assessment, the Corps of Engineers released a final EA and a signed FONSI for the Millennium Project. The Final EA and the FONSI retained Alternative E as the preferred alternative. The final environmental assessment stated that, of the 905 trees to be removed, 771 trees were healthy native trees that had diameters between six and 41 inches.

The project involved removing approximately 211 trees from a less than 2.63 acres (1.06 ha) area containing a portion of a 145-year-old forest that stood within the property boundaries of a historic district that a National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Arlington House had described in 1966. About 491 trees would be removed from an area of trees that was approximately 105 years old. Approximately 203 trees with ages of 50 to 145 years would be removed from a former picnic area. At a public hearing on 11 July 2013, the National Capital Planning Commission approved the site and building plans for the Millennium Project.

In August 2015, the U.S. Army removed Lechner as superintendent of the cemetery after a performance review "called into question his ability to serve successfully as a senior leader". The Army declined to elaborate further and appointed Hallinan to be the temporary Cemetery superintendent until the Army could find a successor. In December 2016, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (Public Law 114–328) authorized the Secretary of the Army to expand the cemetery by acquiring from Arlington County and the Commonwealth of Virginia by condemnation and other means properties near the cemetery that contain the Southgate Road, South Joyce Street and Washington Boulevard right-of-ways, including the Washington Boulevard-Columbia Pike interchange. The Army then informed the Arlington County government in June 2017 that the Army would no longer pursue a land exchange with the county. The Army told the County that the Army would use the entire Navy Annex site to expand the cemetery and would acquire for the cemetery about 5 acres (2.0 ha) of public land that Arlington County then owned. The Army would also acquire for the cemetery expansion about 7 acres (2.8 ha) of land located between Columbia Pike and Interstate 395 that the Commonwealth of Virginia then owned.

In 2018, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced the expansion would allow for 40,000 to 60,000 additional burials and will incorporate the existing United States Air Force Memorial. Construction of roadways is planned for 2021–2023 and of the actual cemetery 2023–2025. Total cost of the project is $274 million. The project covers 70 acres (28 ha) and by closing and relocating local roadways, allows the cemetery to utilize the former Navy annex property and remain contiguous. The Columbia Pike and interchange will be realigned to maximize burial space. The existing Operations Complex will also be relocated south of the Columbia Pike and its current location will become burial space. The expansion is projected to keep the cemetery open into the middle of the century.

150th anniversary

During May and June 2014, the cemetery celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding with a month-long series of events, tours, and lectures. During these celebrations, cemetery officials formally re-designated the Old Amphitheater as the James Tanner Amphitheater. James R. Tanner was a Union Army officer who lost both legs during the war. He later became a War Department stenographer, and recorded much of the early evidence in the investigation into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He later was active in the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union Army veterans group. Tanner is buried a few yards from the amphitheater.

Management

On 2 March 2017, Katharine Kelley, a former U.S. Army officer and senior executive service civilian employee for the Department of the Army, was appointed superintendent of the cemetery. She moved to another Army position in March 2019.

Three years later, on 18 February 2020, Charles R. "Ray" Alexander, a former U.S. Army colonel and senior executive service civilian employee for the Department of the Army, was appointed superintendent of the cemetery.