Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Cemetery encompasses 1.4 acres (0.57 ha) and serves as a burial site for Union soldiers who fought in the American Civil War.

Three bronze plaques installed on the National Cemetery's grounds provide verses from Theodore O'Hara's "Bivouac of the Dead".

During the war, when the city served as a major transportation hub and as a camp for Union troops, the soldiers who died at Indianapolis were initially buried at Greenlawn Cemetery, located west of town.

To provide additional land for burials, a group of local businessmen formed a Board of Corporators (trustees) who established Crown Hill Cemetery on October 22, 1863.

Brigadier General James A. Ekin, a representative of the federal government, and Oliver P. Morton, the governor of Indiana, are credited with selecting its location on the western half of a sloping hill.

Crown Hill's board of corporators made an initial offer to donate land valued at $15,000 for the cemetery, but Ekin did not have the authority to purchase the site.

[7] On October 19, 1866, the remains of Matthew Quigley, a former member of Company A, Thirteenth Regiment, became the first of several hundred Union soldiers from Greenlawn to be interred at Crown Hill.

[9] On May 30, 1868, Crown Hill, along with Arlington National Cemetery and 182 others in twenty-seven states, took part the country's first Memorial Day ceremonies.

[10] On October 7, 1869, John F. Wilson, a former private in Company E, 70th Regiment Indiana Infantry, became the first Union veteran of the Civil War to be buried in the National Cemetery.

The last burial of a Civil War soldier in Crown Hill's National Cemetery took place on November 16, 1898, when John H. Tull, a former private in Company D, 72nd Regiment Indiana Infantry, was buried in Section 10.

[12] On October 27, 1969, Major Robert W. Hayes of the 774th Tactical Airlift, was killed when his plane exploded over Chu Lai, in what was then South Vietnam.

The inscription on its north face reads: "In memory of the unknown dead who fell in our country's service in the War of the Union, A.D. 1861–1865, No name to bid us know, Who rests below, No work of death of birth, Only the grasses wave, Over a mound of earth, Over a nameless grave".