Vicksburg National Military Park will celebrate Veterans Day by offering a ceremony Tuesday morning in the national cemetery and free admission all day to the hallowed battleground.
At 11 a.m. Tuesday, the park will hold a bell-ringing ceremony in Vicksburg National Cemetery in honor of Veterans Day.
The national cemetery is the final resting place of about 17,000 Union soldiers — the largest concentration of Civil War dead in any national cemetery.
The cemetery also has the highest concentration of burials of U.S. Colored Troops in the nation. About 25,000 formerly enslaved men from Mississippi enlisted in the Union army after Vicksburg fell following a 47-day siege in the late spring and summer of 1863.
The cemetery was established by an act of Congress in 1866 and remained open to burial until 1961. Just a handful of those who have purchased plots and are eligible for burial in the cemetery are still living.
The park will also waive its $8 admission fee all day Tuesday in honor of Veterans Day. The holiday is the final fee-free day this year, according to the National Park Service.
Veterans Day was established in 1938 as a day to honor all men and women of the U.S. armed services. The date of Veterans Day was chosen to commemorate 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1919, when an armistice went into effect ending World War I.