PRESTON — Dump trucks and bulldozers are busy building Minnesota’s second state veterans cemetery.

Workers are transforming about 50 acres of woods and meadows near Preston in Fillmore County. By next spring, it will be a serene resting place where 70,000 veterans and their spouses will eventually be buried.

County Veterans Services Officer Jason Marquardt said the cemetery will be more than just rows and rows of identical headstones. Minnesota’s other veterans cemetery near Little Falls is set on flat land. Marquardt says the Preston cemetery on land adjacent to the Root River will be a model for future cemeteries.

The Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs is spending about $10 million to prepare the site, build a committal building and roads.