Santa Fe National Cemetery

Santa Fe National Cemetery occupies a sloping site on the north edge of the city and serves as the federal burial ground for veterans and their dependents from across New Mexico. The cemetery's origins lie in the small post cemetery established at Fort Marcy during the United States military occupation of Santa Fe in the mid-nineteenth century. As the post cemetery filled and the Fort Marcy garrison was reduced, the federal government formally designated the grounds as a national cemetery in 1875, expanding the site to accommodate burials from forts and battlefields across the territory.

The cemetery's permanent buildings were constructed and rebuilt in stages through the twentieth century in a Pueblo Revival idiom appropriate to Santa Fe. The administration building, lodge, and rostrum are finished in earth-toned stucco over adobe and frame construction, with projecting vigas, deep window reveals, low parapets, and timber portals consistent with the architectural style that the city formally adopted in the 1957 Historic Style Ordinance. The grounds are organized into ordered burial sections with uniform marble headstones laid out on a regular grid, terraced where necessary to follow the natural slope.

Burials at Santa Fe National Cemetery include casualties of the Civil War campaigns in New Mexico, including reinterments from the Glorieta Pass battlefield, soldiers from the Indian Wars, veterans of every American conflict from the Spanish-American War onward, and Bataan Death March survivors, reflecting New Mexico's heavy National Guard contribution to that campaign. The cemetery has been documented by the Historic American Landscapes Survey.

The cemetery is administered by the National Cemetery Administration of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and remains an active burial ground. It is open to the public during posted hours. Within the broader adobe tradition of New Mexico, Santa Fe National Cemetery represents the Pueblo Revival adaptation of federal civic and memorial architecture, applying the regional idiom of stucco walls, vigas, and low massing to a national landscape program that elsewhere uses very different forms.