Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery
Reno, Washoe County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Grand Army Of The Republic Cemetery. In 1890 General OM. Mitchel Post 69, Grand Army of the Republic, bought 17 lots in the original Hillside Cemetery for the last resting place for comrades-in arms during the Civil War, 1861-1865.While Friends and relatives of the soldiers maintained the cemetery well, years of neglect and vandalism followed in the twentieth century. Restoration began in 1963 by the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War and other interested citizens of the Reno area.Among those buried here are members of the Nevada volunteers who served in their own state and neighboring areas of the West from 1861 -1866.
Erected by Eva M. Crist Mccarthy
The Story
In 1890 the General O.M. Mitchel Post 69 of the Grand Army of the Republic — the great fraternal organization of Union veterans — bought seventeen lots in Reno's Hillside Cemetery as a final resting place for its Civil War comrades. Among those buried here are Nevada volunteers who served across their own state and the neighboring West from 1861 to 1866. After decades of neglect and vandalism, the Daughters of Union Veterans and local citizens began restoring the plot in 1963.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a tangible reminder that the Civil War reached even the remote Far West, and that Nevada's Union volunteers took their place among the generation that preserved the nation.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Grand Army of the Republic Tree
Reno, NV
This tree was planted in soil gathered from Civil War battlefields and dedicated in June 1913 by the national commander-in-chief to honor the Grand Army of the Republic, the great fraternal order of Union veterans. In 1969 it was rededicated by the Sons and Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War in Reno, keeping the memory of those soldiers alive into the 20th century.
Camp Nye
Carson City, NV
Established just north of here in October 1864, Camp Nye was the home base of Companies D and E of the 1st Nevada Volunteer Cavalry during the Civil War. Rather than fighting Confederates, these Union troopers were largely engaged in conflicts with American Indians across the region; Company D suffered Nevada's only two combat deaths of the war in a battle at Table Mountain in Elko County on May 20, 1865. The camp was deactivated that August, and no trace of its barracks and stables remains.
Unionville
Pershing County, NV
Silver drew settlers into Buena Vista Canyon in 1861, and Southern sympathizers first named their camp Dixie. The following year, as the Civil War divided the nation, the town's neutral and Northern factions won out and rechristened it Unionville. It became the seat of Humboldt County until losing that honor to Winnemucca in 1873, and though the ores thinned by the late 1870s, Unionville kept a reputation as a calmer, more comfortable place than most raucous mining camps.
Reuel Colt Gridley “Citizen Extraordinaire”
Lander County, NV
This modest stone store, opened in 1863, became the launching point for one of the Civil War's most remarkable fundraising stunts. Merchant Reuel Colt Gridley lost an 1864 election wager and, honoring it, auctioned a sack of flour for the Sanitary Fund—the wartime forerunner of the American Red Cross. Resold again and again across Nevada, California, and finally at the St. Louis Sanitary Fair, the single sack raised roughly $275,000 for wounded Union soldiers, even as Gridley himself died nearly penniless six years later.