“The National Park Service is the nation’s largest outdoor history classroom,” echoes a new effort by history advocates hoping to record educational signs being taken down by the Trump regime in the Nation’s national parks, historic sites and other public lands.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, whose first act was to instruct the Department to reduce regulations and expand natural resource extraction efforts, is now asking Americans to report signs in National Parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
This grows out of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which seeks to erase “negative” stories from public view.
The Department has already removed references to LGBTQ people where they found them, and demanded the Smithsonian Institution “remove improper ideology.”
The Executive Order instructs the Department of Interior to “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”
Content deemed inappropriate has been ordered to be removed by September 17, 2025.
Save Our Signs is organizing an effort to build a community archive of the signs, exhibits, and texts that could soon disappear from our National Parks.
“We must act quickly to preserve all Americans’ stories.” their website says.
Organizers are seeking volunteers to quickly photograph interpretive signs, exhibits, or other text from areas administered by the National Park Service, including National Parks, National Historic Sites, National Monuments, National Memorials, National Battlefields, National Trails, National Lakeshores, and other public lands.
Submit Your Photos
1) Find a National Park Service siteto visit.
2) Take photos of any signage (do not include people, make sure text is legible).
3) Upload those images here.
The National Park Service, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, is mandated by law to preserve, protect, and interpret American history per the 1916 Organic Act and 1966 National Historic Preservation Act.
More than two-thirds of the country’s 433 national park sites are dedicated to preserving and interpreting our nation’s history and culture. The agency manages more than 26,000 historic structures, and nearly 185 million historic artifacts.
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