During Camp Calhoun's short existence, well over 200 soldiers are known to have died of disease, and the true number was probably higher because many records are missing or incomplete. Illness quickly became rampant there, as it did in many garrisons and recruiting camps, and once measles, mumps, typhoid, pneumonia, and influenza entered the camp they spread rapidly with deadly results. The courthouse, Methodist Church, and a number of private homes were turned into makeshift hospitals filled with ailing soldiers. Many of the young men at Calhoun had never traveled far from home and had never been exposed to common diseases, and they were thrown together in cramped and often unsanitary conditions at a time when there was little understanding of how diseases were contracted or transmitted and the causes of infection were unknown. A large infestation of rats made conditions even worse. Camp Calhoun's dead were buried in two lots set aside for a community cemetery in the original 1852 plat of Calhoun. Soldiers buried there also included the eight men killed during the Battle of Sacramento on December 28, 1861, the two who later died of wounds sustained in that battle, and several soldiers who died in accidents. Efforts to identify those interred there and to erect suitable memorials began in 1997, and the restored Camp Calhoun Cemetery was dedicated in May 2008.