FEDERAL FUNDS GIVEN TO MAKE CARETAKER'S LODGE TOURIST CENTER

MOUND CITY, Ill. -- The 135-year-old caretaker's lodge at the Mound City National Cemetery will soon be turned into an interpretive center.

A grant of more than $938,000 has been designated to repair the eight-room lodge, once scheduled for destruction. The two-level, brick building has five rooms on the main floor and three rooms and bath on the second floor.

The old lodge, erected in 1875 as an on-site cemetery superintendent's home, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 after being vacant a number of years.

"This is great news," said Clayton Bierbaum of the Mound City National Cemetery Preservation Commission.

The cemetery will receive $187,866 for architectural and engineering services to turn the lodge into an interpretive center.

The latest grants were funded through the Tourism Attraction Development Grant Program, which allows municipalities, counties and local groups to develop and improve tourist attractions, and the Tourism Private Sector Grant Program that provides grants to match funds from the private sector for the purpose of attracting and sponsoring major tourism events.

One grant provides the $751,000 to the 20 percent matching funds announced earlier by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The improved lodge building will also be used as an interpretation center for the Ohio River Scenic Byways Route.

Commission's work

The preservation commission, which leases the structure, is in the process of making a 25-year lease on the building. The lease runs out this year.

In the early 1990s, the commission launched a grass-roots effort to save the lodge at the entrance of the cemetery. The cemetery is one of five overseen by Department of Veterans Affairs officials at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri.

The lodge, which is vacant, was once on a VA list of buildings to be razed. The VA deferred its plan to demolish the building as long as the preservation group worked to preserve it.

A lot of people -- veterans, church groups, garden clubs and others -- jumped on the preservation bandwagon, and in 1997, when it was named to the Historic Register.

Cemetery history

The cemetery near U.S. 51 and Highway 37 just west of Mound City was established as a burial place for those who died at Civil War military hospitals in Mound City and nearby Cairo, Ill. The hospitals were established in the two cities in 1861.

The first patients at the Mound City hospital were men wounded in the Battle of Belmont in Missouri in November 1861. Combat at Shiloh and Fort Donelson in Tennessee in 1862 sent more wounded to Mound City, and the death rate began to soar.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln authorized establishment of national cemeteries for solders "who shall die in the service of our country."

A dozen cemeteries were established, and the Mound City cemetery was among the first.

There are more than 2,600 "unknown" soldiers in the cemetery. More than 5,000 soldiers were buried at the cemetery during the first 10 years of its existence. Civil War soldiers from both the North and South are buried there.

Burials in the 12-acre cemetery have slowed during the past decade, ranging from 25 to 50 a year.

The 12-acre cemetery was excepted to reach its capacity between 2003 and 2005, but earlier this year -- during Memorial Day ceremonies -- the preservation group presented the VA with a deed for an additional 3.64 acres adjoining the cemetery, so military burials can continue far into the future.