Memorial Day: Behind the Scenes of some of America's Most Sacred Sites

On May 30, 1868, 5,000 people gathered at Arlington National Cemetery and placed flowers on the graves of 20,000 Civil War soldiers. Major General John Logan had issued the call just weeks earlier, designating the day to honor those who died in defense of the country. He called it Decoration Day. Small American flags were placed at each grave - the same tradition followed at Arlington to this day.

The Civil War had taken approximately 620,000 soldiers - roughly 2% of the entire American population. The country needed a way to carry that grief collectively. What started as flowers on graves became a national observance. After World War I it expanded to honor fallen service members from every conflict. Today it honors the more than 1.1 million Americans who have died in service to this nation.

This is the 158th Memorial Day. This weekend, a record 45.1 million Americans are traveling. Ceremonies are happening in thousands of communities across the country. At 3:00pm local time, federal law calls for a national moment of silence. Flags fly at half-staff until noon, then are raised to full staff.

Arlington National Cemetery

The first thing to understand about Arlington is that it has never closed.

Not once in 161 years. Not for weather, not for construction, not for a government shutdown, not for a global pandemic. Every single day since May 13, 1864 - when Private William Henry Christman became the first soldier buried on what had been the Lee family estate - the cemetery has been operational.

Today it conducts between 27 and 30 funeral services every weekday. Up to six committal services per hour, five times a day, each with full military honors. In 2024, the cemetery conducted approximately 7,000 burials. The grounds team, engineering staff, and operations complex manage a 639-acre site with 18 miles of paved road, water and sewer utilities serving the full property, and an active construction program expanding the southern boundary to add 50 acres of additional burial space.

The cemetery has been designated a Level III arboretum - a distinction held by only 24 institutions worldwide for the quality of its horticultural program. More than 10,000 trees across 300 varieties and species are maintained on the grounds. The annual operations and infrastructure budget is approximately $80 million.

The executive director once summarized the operational challenge this way: "We never, ever close, and are in the public eye every day. We have to do all that and be operational at the same time."

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Before guards were posted in the 1920s, visitors to Arlington would occasionally use the plaza around the Tomb as a picnic area, drawn to the view. That ended. On April 6, 1948, the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment - the Old Guard - began the uninterrupted 24 hour guard that continues today.

Every sentinel walks 21 steps down the mat, pauses for 21 seconds, turns, pauses again, and walks back - honoring the tradition of the 21 gun salute. Each shift is 27 hours. In warm months, the guard changes every 30 minutes. In winter, every hour. When the cemetery closes at 5pm, the sentinel continues - in training, in darkness, in whatever conditions are present.

Through Hurricane Irene. Through Hurricane Sandy. Through blizzards that buried the plaza under two feet of snow and drove every other person off the grounds, the guard stayed. The contingency plan for extreme weather doesn't provide a reason to stand down. It provides the procedure for continuing the mission safely regardless of what the weather is doing.

When the conditions are severe enough, sentinels can take shelter in a small enclosure 20 feet from the plaza. They remain armed and alert. The mission doesn't pause.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Maya Lin was a 21 year old Yale student when her design was selected from among 1,421 entries submitted to a national competition. Two long walls of polished black granite, set into the earth at an angle, meeting at a vertex. The names of 58,191 service members engraved in chronological order of casualty - running from the vertex outward along each wall and back again, so the first and last casualties meet in the middle and form a figurative circle.

The memorial was dedicated in November 1982. It has been open to the public every day since, 24 hours a day, with rangers on site from 9:30am to 10pm.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund - the nonprofit that led the original effort to build The Wall - assumed primary responsibility for the site's ongoing maintenance alongside the National Park Service. VVMF pays for the insurance, the detailed maintenance manual that guides general care, and the cost of adding new names to the granite as they are officially verified each year. When the $1 million lighting system was replaced in 2005, VVMF covered that cost.

During that lighting project, when crews opened the paving to set new lights, they discovered that the large concrete drainage trench running beneath the plaza had not only twisted - it had settled and sunk several inches since the memorial was dedicated in 1982. The drainage and paving systems had to be replaced before the lighting work could continue. A project that was already significant became substantially larger.

The Lincoln Memorial

Henry Bacon's memorial was built on reclaimed marshland. The ground couldn't support the weight of a 38,000-ton granite and marble structure without significant intervention, so construction crews drove timber piles deep into the earth until they reached bedrock. The same technique was used again 90 years later when the adjacent Reflecting Pool had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

The Reflecting Pool project required cataloging and removing nearly 600 granite coping stones individually, each one dating to the original 1920s construction. Environmental specialists in full protective equipment removed the pool bottom along with 335,000 square feet of asbestos-laden waterproofing discovered beneath it. More than 2,100 new timber piles were driven 50 feet to bedrock. Eight thousand linear feet of new HDPE piping connected the rebuilt pool to a new water treatment facility built 200 yards away. The project took two years.

The Lincoln Memorial's flat roofs, last replaced 20 years before they were assessed, had begun to fail. Water was coming through and staining the interior walls of the chamber - most visibly on the southeast wall, behind and around the statue. Open mortar joints in the white marble were allowing moisture to penetrate. Marble at the four corner penthouse levels had been cracked and damaged in the 2011 earthquake. An eight-month roof replacement and masonry repair project followed.

The memorial remained open throughout. Visitors could still climb the 87 steps and stand in the chamber. The work happened around them.

The National World War II Memorial

The memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day weekend in 2004. It is the only 20th century event commemorated on the National Mall's central axis, positioned between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Fifty-six granite pillars connected by bronze ropes represent the states and territories. Four thousand sculpted gold stars on the Freedom Wall commemorate the more than 400,000 Americans who died.

The water features are not decorative afterthoughts. They are engineered systems - several miles of stainless-steel welded pipe running through underground tunnel systems beneath the memorial, large display pumps, control systems, and fountain vault connections supporting the Rainbow Pool and the ceremonial fountains. They were built to be permanent and active.

In January 2026, the National Park Service closed the memorial for a $3.7 million infrastructure modernization project. The in-fountain lighting systems were no longer functional. The in-ground lighting that highlights the state and territory pillars had failed. Electrical and mechanical systems needed upgrades to support safe and reliable operation.

The Scale of What This Requires

The National Mall and Memorial Parks - the National Park Service unit that manages these sites, along with the monuments, open spaces, and historic structures of the Mall - receives approximately 35 million visitors per year and generates an estimated $1.3 billion in annual economic output for the Washington DC region.

Its estimated deferred maintenance backlog, as of the most recent NPS infrastructure assessment, is $903 million. The annual routine maintenance requirement is $19 million. The largest single category in the deferred maintenance backlog - the monuments, memorials, and managed landscapes - accounts for $813 million of that total.

The Lincoln Memorial's failing roof. The WWII Memorial's non-functional lighting. The twisted drainage trench under The Wall's plaza. These are not isolated incidents. They are the predictable outcome of a $903 million backlog expressing itself one aging system at a time, at the most visited park unit in the United States.

The people who designed, built, and maintain these places were solving real problems. Marshy ground that couldn't hold the load. Drainage that failed over decades underground without anyone noticing. A roof that reached the end of its life cycle because 20 years passed.

They were also doing something else. They were ensuring that the places built to honor extraordinary sacrifice were maintained to a standard that matches what they represent. That the flags stay upright. That the names on The Wall remain legible and properly lit. That the chamber where Lincoln sits stays dry and intact. That the Rainbow Pool functions the way it was designed to function when the memorial opened.

Today is Memorial Day. A day of remembrance to honor the brave American service members who gave their lives in service to their country.