In 1884, the State General Assembly authorized an initial $10,000 appropriation to establish a soldiers’ home to care for disabled veterans of the Civil War, choosing the former country estate of Seth B. Hunt, erected in 1860. The Soldiers’ Home of Vermont opened on April 1, 1887, with 25 veterans, and its 200-acre site included a working farm for able members. In the 1880s, the first building campaign expanded the barracks and added a chapel and hospital facility, while the original one-acre cemetery grew to 17 acres and became the burial place of more than 300 veterans. In 1898, soldiers of the Mexican and Spanish Wars and every subsequent conflict were granted admission. By the 1960s, the focus shifted from domiciliary care to long-term extended care with facilities for 159 veterans, and a capital construction program added a social hall, new chapel, new barrack wings, dining hall, and the first veterans nursing home care unit in the U.S. The Soldiers’ Home of Vermont was renamed the Vermont Veterans’ Home in 1971, and today it is the second oldest operating state veterans’ home in the U.S. and the only veterans’ home in Vermont, with memorial areas honoring Vermont Medal of Honor winners, Gold Star Mothers, and Vermont veterans from all of the nation’s conflicts since the Civil War.