In 1861, Camp Rathbun, near the town of Elmira, was established as a training camp at the beginning of the Civil War. As the Union troops who trained there were sent to their respective assignments, the camp emptied and in 1864 it was turned into the Elmira Prison prisoner-of-war camp. The facilities were not adequate to house the thousands of Confederate prisoners, and many succumbed to exposure, malnutrition, and smallpox and were subsequently interred at the cemetery.
The U.S. government erected the Shohola Monument in 1911 to commemorate a tragic railroad accident that took the lives of both Confederate and Union soldiers during the Civil War in 1864.