History
Florida National Cemetery is located in the Withlacoochee State Forest, approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of Tampa. The forest was acquired by the federal government from private landowners between 1936 and 1939 under the provisions of the U.S. Land Resettlement Administration. The United States Forest Service managed the property until a lease-purchase agreement transferred it to the Florida Board of Forestry in 1958. Currently, Withlacoochee State Forest is the second-largest state forest in Florida, divided into eight distinct tracts of land.
In 1842, Congress encouraged settlement here by establishing the Armed Occupation Act. The law granted a patent for 160 acres (0.65 km2) to any man who kept a gun and ammunition, built a house, cultivated 5 acres (20,000 m2) of the land and remained there for at least five years. Settlers moved in to take advantage of the generous offer. The area contained abundant timber and suitable farmland, appealing attributes to frontiersmen. In 1845 Florida was granted statehood.
During the Civil War, a sugar mill on the Homosassa River supplied sugar to the Confederacy. A robust citrus-growing industry developed in the eastern part of the area and became a focus of intense economic expansion soon after the war.
In 1980, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that it would establish a new national cemetery in Florida, its fourth. Two major locations for the cemetery were studied: property near the Cross Florida Barge Canal and the Withlacoochee State Forest. The Withlacoochee site, though more environmentally sensitive, was supported by government officials. In February 1983, the state transferred land to the VA for the development of a Florida National Cemetery. The first interment was in 1988.
A columbarium was opened in November, 2001 for cremated remains. In the twenty years the cemetery has been in operation, there have been over 97,000 interments.
Read more about this topic: Florida National Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)