VA buys site in Meigs County to expand Chattanooga National Cemetery

Oct. 3—The 160-year-old Chattanooga National Military will expand outside Chattanooga for the first time with a second property on a lakefront site in Meigs County nearly 50 miles away.

After years of searches and study, the U.S. Veterans Administration announced Tuesday it has purchased 270 acres on Chickamauga Lake to build a new national cemetery to provide needed burial grounds in East Tennessee as the Chattanooga National Cemetery nears capacity.

For the past three years, the VA has been seeking proposals for a new cemetery site to provide additional burial spaces as the Chattanooga cemetery runs out of land.

"We are very excited to have acquired a great piece of property in the Chattanooga area," Matt Quinn, a retired Army Major General who serves as the VA's undersecretary for Memorial Affairs, said in a statement Tuesday.

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