New Hampshire is considering establishing a new veteran's cemetery in the town of Stark.
On a 20-acre plot overgrown with brush, the cement foundations of guard towers and a few old fireplaces are the only remnants of a prisoner of war camp from World War II, New Hampshire’s only POW camp.
Officials are weighing a plan to use that land and surrounding forest as a site for the new cemetery. New Hampshire currently has one veteran's cemetery, in Boscawen, but traveling to the cemetery requires a long drive for vets and their families in the North Country.
Dennis Lunn, director of the Stark Heritage Center, says this episode in state history isn't well known by locals but attracts tourists. “The biggest thing that draws people to here from around the world—I mean Japan, Germany, Asia, Middle East—is the prisoner of war camp.”
The property is federal land, and discussions of the plan for a cemetery are ongoing.
