A long-running effort to honor the final resting place of the many African Americans who helped build Chickamauga from the ground up is finally reaching completion.

Established in 1898, District Hill Cemetery off Cove Road began transforming from a largely unmarked graveyard into an important historical and cultural asset in Walker County about a decade ago. The revitalization progressed through several key milestones:

• 2015: A ground-penetrating radar technician helped locate gravesites throughout the cemetery.
• 2017: Students from the University of Georgia developed a master plan for the hallowed grounds.
• 2021: Volunteers organized a cleanup of the grounds, and local Boy Scouts installed markers at burial sites.

Building on research initiated by Willie Haslerig, and continued in collaboration with Covenant College, historians have confirmed that 170 individuals are buried at District Hill. 

“Enslaved people were buried back here,” noted Joyce Harrison. “There are people here who fought in the Spanish-American War. Of course we have Mark Thrash buried here, who was enslaved and worked for the battlefield park and was a government employee and he buried union and confederate soldiers after the war. He lived to be 122.”

Laborers, teachers, preachers and others who contributed to the foundation of the city of Chickamauga are also interred here. “They need to be honored for the work that they did and not forgotten. Their space and place is sacred,” said Harrison.

To pay tribute to these community members, the Walker County Historic Preservation Commission applied for and received a $75,000 grant from the Riverview Foundation to erect a memorial monument with the names of those resting at District Hill. 

The monument will be formally dedicated during a ceremony on October 24th at 11:00 a.m.