Arlington National Cemetery is running out of room

Headstones at Arlington National Cemetery.
(Image credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Unless the Army comes up with strict new rules about who can be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families will be completely full in 25 years.

Every year, about 7,000 people are buried at the cemetery, where 420,000 veterans and their relatives are already interred. The Army wants to be able to bury people at Arlington for 150 more years, but it can't get any bigger because of highways and development. One proposal is extremely strict: Allow burials only for service members killed in action or those who have received the Medal of Honor, The New York Times reports.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.