Camp Nelson National Cemetery named
one of three national historic landmarks

Camp Nelson National Cemetery in Jessamine County has been named a national historic landmark.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis announced March 11 that Camp Nelson and some 10 other sites around the nation have been given that designation.

“These national historic landmark designations span more than two centuries of our country’s history,” Salazar said. “Today’s designations include significant sites that help tell the story of America and the contributions that people from all walks of life have made as we strive for a more perfect union.”

Camp Nelson was established as a Union recruiting center for black troops during the Civil War. It also was a Union supply depot and a hospital.

After the war ended in 1865, the federal government sold off most of the 4,000-acre site, leaving only a camp for refugees and a three-acre cemetery, which became the predecessor of today’s national cemetery.

Other newly designated landmarks included Kentucky’s Stagg Distillery, the Connecticut home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., where civil rights activists were attacked on March 7, 1965, by police during a protest march.

A total of 13 new national historic landmarks were announced by Salazar, who said they “recognize a more complete story of America…”