He would perceive, Mr. Bonds, that time is like a freeway with an infinite number of lanes – all leading from the past into the future. But not into the same future. A driver in Lane A may crash, while a driver in Lane B survives. It follows that a driver, by changing lanes, can change his future.
- Quantic, Infinite Regression (2001)

You’ve probably driven right by Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee. It’s more likely, however, that you drove right through it, perhaps not fully aware of its existence.

Wood National Cemetery is just southwest of American Family Field, home of the Milwaukee Brewers. The cemetery is part of the vast Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, which also includes the Milwaukee Soldiers Home campus. The Soldiers Home, built in 1867, served as a center for disabled Civil War veterans. The first cemetery here opened in 1871. In 1937, it was named Wood Cemetery after General George Wood. In 1973 it became a national cemetery, one of only two in Wisconsin. [1]

Wood National Cemetery is sprawling and complex. It contains over thirty thousand white granite headstones laid out in parallel lines. Veterans of the War of 1812 are buried here, as well as thousands of Civil War veterans, including members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and US “Colored Troops.” [2] The 54th was the first African-American regiment of the Civil War, organized by Massachusetts’ abolitionist governor John A. Andrew in 1863. The regiment included two of Frederick Douglass’s sons. [3] 

The US Colored Troops were African American units – both recruited and volunteer – organized during the Civil War. Company F of the 29th Infantry was a Wisconsin unit composed primarily of African Americans from Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin who took the place of white Wisconsin residents who had been drafted. [4] During the Civil War, draft buyouts – which allowed the wealthy to avoid the draft – could be achieved by paying a commutation fee or finding a willing substitute. 

Wood National Cemetery is surrounded by even more cemeteries. The area is a huge necropolis. There’s Chapel Hill Cemetery, Calvary Catholic Cemetery (which contains the graves of over three hundred Civil War veterans), and three Jewish Cemeteries – Anshai Lebowitz, Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel and Spring Hill – established over a century ago. [5] 

Most of Wood National Cemetery lies south of Interstate-94, but a five-acre portion lies to the north of the freeway. Over 175,000 vehicles pass through the cemetery on I-94 every day. [6] The vibrations are so intense that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is currently installing metal plates to inhibit cemetery erosion as part of a freeway expansion project. [7]

I-94 was built in the early 1960s. Conventional wisdom is that the freeway forced the relocation of many graves. However, this appears to be an urban legend. A road has separated the two parts of the cemetery for over a century. The road first appears on US Geological Survey topographic maps from 1901. [8] Construction of I-94 did require filling in one of the ponds that were part of the cemetery’s original landscape design. [2] Carriage paths wound around the ponds, which visitors used for boating and skating. [9]

I-94, however, is not a quaint carriage path or rural road. Rest in Peace? The northern part of the cemetery is a noisy place, with only a chain link fence separating it from freeway traffic. It’s also a lonely place. It’s hard to get to – accessible only by a narrow bridge over I-94 – so there are few visitors. Some of the stones here are from the Civil War, while others are more recent. Except for one area where the stones are recessed into the ground, the overall design is the same – row after row of identical white markers.

The northern part of the cemetery is itself bisected by an electrical transmission corridor, walled off by chain link fences on either side. This was once the route of the Milwaukee Street Railway Company’s electric streetcar, which began operations in 1892. [9] The steel catenary towers – which held the wires conducting electricity to the streetcars – are still standing today.

Transportation corridors – including carriage paths, streetcar tracks, highways – have long been a part of Wood National Cemetery. The problem is their tendency to grow and expand. It’s like wood rot. Once the decay starts, it spreads. The carriage path turns into a road. The road turns into a freeway. The freeway gets wider. Our built environment reflects our values – mobility, convenience, speed. Who has time to reflect on a collection of old Civil War graves when the Brewers game is about to start?

Which begs the question – what sort of future do we want? A highway with an infinite number of lanes? Does the integrity of the cemetery really stand a chance against the nation’s growing stockpile of almost three hundred million registered vehicles?

We don’t talk much about sacred spaces in our culture, but we used to. In the words of the “Lady Managers” of the Wisconsin Soldiers’ Home Association in 1867, “This home [The Milwaukee Soldiers Home] is … a serious and permanent assumption of a sacred duty which we owe the defenders of our common country.” [9] Maybe that’s the kind of talk we need to hear more of today, and not just for veterans’ cemeteries, but for all the final resting spaces of our nation’s citizens. 

Sources

[1] Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration, Wood National Cemetery. https://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/wood.asp

[2] National Register of Historic Places, National Soldiers Home Historic District. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/363e537c-39bc-4891-8c2f-6c9b26c13568

[3] Massachusetts National Guard, 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment. https://massnationalguard.org/54th-massachusetts-volunteer-regiment/

[4] Wisconsin Historical Society, Co. F of the 29th Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops History.  https://legacy.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS2068

[5] Maria Peralta-Arellano, What's the story behind the cluster of cemeteries next to I-94? WUWM89.7, March 6, 2026. https://www.wuwm.com/story-behind-cluster-cemeteries-next-to-i-94-milwaukee

 [6] Ellie Nakamoto-White, Drivers react to I-94 construction, WisDOT officials explain why project will take eight years. CBS58 News Milwaukee, Nov 14, 2025. https://www.cbs58.com/news/drivers-react-to-i-94-construction-wisdot-officials-explain-why-project-will-take-eight-years

[7] Duaa Israr, Steel walls to protect Wood National Cemetery as part of I-94 expansion project. CBS58 News Milwaukee, June 8, 2026. https://www.cbs58.com/news/steel-walls-to-protect-wood-national-cemetery-as-part-of-i-94-expansion-project

[8] US Geological Survey, topoView. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview

[9] Patricia A. Lynch, Milwaukee’s Soldiers Home. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston SC, 2013.