[1] The memorial is located at the center of the traffic circle on the borders of Cresskill and Dumont in Bergen County, New Jersey, at the intersection of Madison Avenue and Knickerbocker Road (CR 505).

It features a large carved relief sculpted by Robert Ingersoll Aitken, which portrays a World War I doughboy with an eagle above it.

An inscription on the south side states that the obelisk "marks the center of the camp and faces the highway over which more than a million American soldiers passed on their way to and from the World War, 1917–1919."

Near the monument on a large boulder is a copper plaque designed by Katherine Lamb Tait which has a relief of the Palisades, and in the ground is a dimensional stone carving of a map of Camp Merritt.

General John "Black Jack" Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, gave the dedication address to an estimated audience of 20,000 people.