Grant to pay for veterans cemetery expansion in Boulder City
CARSON CITY - A $7.5 million federal grant will allow the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City to add more space for cremated remains and double caskets to what already is the second-busiest state veterans cemetery in the United States.
Members of the Legislature's Subcommittee to Review Public Works Board Matters authorized the state Monday to expand the cemetery once the funds are released, likely this summer. The grant already has been awarded to the cemetery. The project will take about eight months to finish.
The 79-acre cemetery, created in 1990, already is the final resting place for nearly 30,000 veterans and their spouses. There are about 1,800 burials a year.
Funds will allow the cemetery to expand the columbarium wall where cremains are placed and the in-ground cremation area. The double-casket area where veterans and their spouses are buried side by side also will be enlarged.
Chris Naylor, superintendent of the cemetery, said 35 acres in the cemetery have not been used, so there is plenty of space for expansion. A previous $3.4 million federal grant already is being used to construct a new administration building and add pavement at the cemetery.
Naylor attributes the cemetery's popularity in part to the large veterans population in Southern Nevada. The Northern Nevada veterans cemetery in Fernley is the burial place for about 8,000 veterans and their spouses.
There is no charge for veterans to be interred in the cemetery, but there is a $450 charge for their spouses.
About 90 percent of the veterans buried in the cemetery are Nevadans. There is no requirement that veterans be state residents.
Naylor said he expects the peak time for burials has passed. Many of the veterans in the cemetery served in World War II, but as their generation passes away, more of the veterans buried there have served in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.
