United States v. Lee (1882)
With local cemeteries in Alexandria County and Alexandria filling rapidly with war dead, Quartermaster General of the United States Army Montgomery C. Meigs proposed using of the Arlington estate as a cemetery. The first burial there was made on May 13, 1864. United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton approved the establishment of a military cemetery on June 15, 1864, creating Arlington National Cemetery. By the end of the war in April 1865, more than 16,000 people had been buried at Arlington. In September 1866, a memorial and a burial vault (containing the remains of 2,111 U.S. and Confederate soldiers who died at the First Battle of Bull Run, Second Battle of Bull Run, and along the Rappahannock River) were buried in Lee's former wildflower garden on the mansion's east side beneath the Civil War Unknowns Monument, a memorial to honor unknown soldiers who had died during the American Civil War.
Arlington National Cemetery
On May 11, 2016, the Department of the Army published in the Federal Register a proposed rule that would, among other things, prohibit a visitor to an Army National Military Cemetery (Arlington National Cemetery and the United States Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery) from riding a bicycle without first acquiring a pass to visit a relative's gravesite or columbarium niche. After receiving 13 comments from 13 individuals concerning the use of bicycles in the cemetery (including comments from representatives of the Arlington County Board and local bicycle advocacy groups that opposed the new restrictions), the Department of the Army published a final rule in the Federal Register on September 26, 2016, that implemented the proposed rule, effective October 26, 2016.