Founded in conjunction with the historic Western Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Leavenworth National Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 18,000 soldiers.  Among those buried here are veterans of every conflict since the Indian Wars. Occupying more than 160 acres of rolling hills above the Missouri River, the cemetery offers sweeping views in all directions.

In the 1880s, the City of Leavenworth offered to donate the land for the National Home, once a part of the Delaware Indian Reservation and site of the Stockbridge (Indian) Baptist Mission, along with $50,000. The donation of the land, and its proximity to the existing Fort Leavenworth four miles to the north, made Leavenworth the easy choice for the first National Home Branch west of the Mississippi River.  The Western Branch, known locally as the “Old Soldiers’ Home,” opened in 1885, providing veterans from the Midwest with housing, medical care, education, job training, and employment in return for the sacrifices they made in the name of their country.  Today, the Western Branch of the National Home is designated a National Historic Landmark, with dozens of significant buildings designed in the Victorian, Romanesque, Gothic Revival, and Mission styles.  The modern Eisenhower VA Medical Center, the successor to the National Home, is located just north of the historic campus, and serves the contemporary needs of America’s veterans.

In 1886, one year after the founding of the Western Branch of the National Home, Leavenworth National Cemetery opened. Designed by landscape architect Horace William Shaler Cleveland, who also designed the Western Branch of the National Home campus, the cemetery features curving pathways that conform to the natural topography of the site.  The cemetery’s main entrance is located at the southwest corner of the property marked with a double gate, flanked on either side by walls of random ashlar stone, and covered by a wooden pergola.  Near Section 35 of the cemetery is the rostrum, a limestone, Classical Revival style structure built in 1936.  Other historic buildings at the site include the limestone Rest House, constructed in 1921, and the Tool House, constructed in 1926.

Entrance to Leavenworth National Cemetery Courtesy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration, History Program

The largest monument in the cemetery, a limestone obelisk dedicated in 1919 to “Soldiers Who Died for their Country,” is located in Section 43A, atop the highest point on the grounds.  Other monuments include an obelisk to honor Thomas Brennan of the 7th Kansas Cavalry, the Fighting Fourth Marines memorial, six plaques featuring stanzas from Theodore O’Hara’s poem “Bivouac of the Dead,” a plaque inscribed with President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and a carillon donated by the American Veterans (AMVETS).

During construction of Building 122 at the Eisenhower VA Medical Center, the remains of 12 American Indians were uncovered.  The remains, believed to be a group of Christian Indians, the Munsees, who were allowed to settle on the land now occupied by the medical center, were reinterred to Section 34, Row 21, Grave 8.  In Section 43A, near the limestone obelisk, are buried several former governors (managers) of the National Home, along with members of their families.

Leavenworth National Cemetery is the final resting place for six recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, given for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”