Fort Scott National Cemetery

Fort Scott National Cemetery was established in 1862 to receive Civil War dead from the surrounding area. It is one of the original 14 national cemeteries established by the Union Army and contains the graves of veterans from every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

The cemetery is a quiet, well-kept space on the edge of town, with the characteristic rows of white headstones that characterise national cemeteries across the United States. It's free to visit and open during daylight hours. The grounds are small enough to walk in a short time, and the inscriptions on individual stones tell their own stories.

things to do sight
A story
The cemetery includes a section for soldiers of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, the regiment raised here in 1862 that was among the first Black units in the Union Army. Their section is marked with a distinctive monument. Many of the men buried here had been enslaved before the war; they enlisted in Kansas while Missouri, just across the border, was still a slave state.