Dayton National Military Cemetery is in Dayton’s Fairlane neighborhood, located at 4400 W 3rd St, Dayton, OH 45417. Its 50,000 graves include veterans from every major conflict the United States has been involved in dating back to the American Revolutionary War.
The cemetery was established just after the Civil War, and a lot of nearby street names come from that era. Across the street from the cemetery is the corner of Gettysburg Avenue and Chicamauga Avenue, named after the Civil War’s two bloodiest battles.
The street name Chicamauga is a misspelling, as are a few other streets with names related to the Civil War. The battle was fought near the town of Chickamauga in northern Georgia.
Dayton National Cemetery dates to 1867 when it was established as a final resting place for veterans who died while living at the Central Branch National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Dayton, Ohio. The Central Branch was one of the country’s first institutions developed to care for disabled Union veterans. The innovative, village-like design of the branch inspired the layout and architecture of later National Homes. The cemetery’s 98 acres, located on the north side of the home’s campus, contain the graves of veterans from every major U.S. military conflict from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War.
Statue at the base of the Soldiers Monument overlooking Dayton National Cemetery James Rosenthal, Historic American Buildings Survey Photographer
Near the cemetery’s contemporary administration building stands the Soldier’s Monument. Sited on a low hill surrounded by graves, the monument is a 30-foot-tall marble Corinthian column surmounted by a statue of a Union soldier at parade rest. The column is set on a granite base. At the corners of the base stand figures representing the Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, and the Navy. Two ornamental artillery cannons flank the monument. The column once stood at the front of Philadelphia’s Bank of Pennsylvania, designed by Benjamin H. Latrobe. Central Branch residents erected the monument, and President Rutherford B. Hayes dedicated it on September 12, 1877.
In 1936, the Ohio Society of the Daughters of the War of 1812 erected a monument honoring the heroes of the nation’s final war with Great Britain. The memorial features a large boulder with a bronze plaque dedicated to the 33 veterans of the war buried at the cemetery.
Dayton National Cemetery is also the final resting place for five 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.”
4400 W 3rd St, Dayton, OH 45417
