Lawsuit Reveals 13 National Park Signs Removed Were Thrown Away

In September 2025, National Park Service (NPS) employees began removing signs, exhibits, films, and books about climate change, slavery, and the killing of Native Americans from dozens of agency-managed sites.

Recent court filings show that, amid that process, at least 13 items were destroyed or lost.

This revelation is illustrated in a NPS spreadsheet that was made public on June 17 by a court order. The spreadsheet lists 51 items that were removed from 24 Park Service sites. Thirty-six removed displays are still housed in storage at their respective parks, while the locations of two others in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska and Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. are unknown.

Former NPS ranger Melissa Dalley has been traveling the country since April, documenting signs that she’s personally seen removed. Dalley, 49, has been cross-referencing her records against the spreadsheet, as well as an internal database that was published in March. She told Outside that she believes the NPS removed more signs than the number listed in the document.

“[The spreadsheet] is by no means complete,” Dalley said. “There is a lot of information that you can find online or in books, but also there is some information that only exists on that sign at that park.”

Outside has repeatedly asked the Department of Interior (DOI) for a catalog of the removed signs and an explanation as to what happened to them. The DOI did responded to our most recent request for comment.

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to review how the country’s past is presented at 433 NPS-managed sites. Secretarial Order 3431 followed in May of that year, requiring the agency to remove anything that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living” and to emphasize instead the beauty and grandeur of the landscape.

A coalition of nonprofit groups sued the federal government in early 2026, requesting that the NPS restore the signs. The lawsuit kicked off an ongoing battle in court.

Joy Beasley, an NPS associate director who helped catalog the removed signs, agrees with Dalley. In a written statement filed in federal court on June 17, 2026, Beasley said that the spreadsheet is “unlikely to capture every removal, revision, or replacement.”

“We anticipate that it may be difficult to timely communicate with certain park staff that have knowledge of specific removed, revised, or replaced items,” Beasley wrote in the statement. “The summer season is the busiest time of year at most parks, with park staff often assigned to visitor-facing positions in remote areas that limit their access to communication technologies.”

Signs at the Following 13 Sites Were Discarded

1. Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is a 70,000-acre forested area straddling a stretch of the Delaware River on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania border. It also features numerous 18th- and 19th-century historical sites and is the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people (also known as the Delaware Indians).

According to the spreadsheet, the park’s “Guide to the Gap” brochure was removed for allegedly “disparaging Americans past or living.” The brochure’s location is recorded as “discarded.” When or whether it will be replaced is not listed. A copy of the brochure, available on the NPS website, describes the “introduction of diseases” that “devastated the native population, who had no immunities.”

“By the mid-1700s, warfare and disease contributed to an estimated loss of 90 percent of the Lenape people. During the 1700s, most Lenape people chose to, or were forcibly, moved west, eventually settling in Canada, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma,” reads page 19 of the brochure.

2. Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey and New York

Found in Gateway National Recreation Area, the Bay Wildlife Refuge encompasses over 12,600 acres of water, saltmarshes, freshwater and brackish water pond. It’s also one of the largest bird habitats in the Northeast, according to the NPS

In September 2025, The Washington Post reported that a display was taken down for referring to historical events like slavery, Japanese American incarceration sites, and conflicts with Native Americans. Replacing it would require an outside vendor to rebuild the exhibit and in-house staff to install it, according to the court documents.

3. First State National Historical Park in Delaware

This historical district is made up of six sites spread throughout Delaware considered to be significant to the founding and forming of the United States. According to the spreadsheet, NPS officials removed the Caesar Rodney exhibit. Rodney helped secure Delaware’s vote for American independence in 1776 and also owned up to 200 human slaves.

4. National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C.

An exhibit panel at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Memorial Memorial was removed. A sign that points out the discriminatory nature of some of FDR’s policies was replaced with a sign about how he designed his own wheelchair, according to The Guardian.

5. Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Washington, D.C.

NPS removed an informational wayside from the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, a historic house and museum of the women’s suffrage and equal rights movements in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

6. Buck Island Reef National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands

A Junior Ranger book was removed at the monument that John F. Kennedy once referred to as “the finest marine garden in the Caribbean Sea.” The 176-acre island features an underwater trail for snorkelers.

7. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia

Established in 1940, this NPS site preserves the historic mountain pass used by Native Americans, pioneer Daniel Boone, and westward-bound pioneers, according to the NPS.

8, 9. Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park in South Carolina

Outside previously reported  that NPS removed an interpretive display that described how climate change may eventually submerge the Civil War-era fortress. The information displayed was part of research conducted by the NPS and Western Carolina University, and also showed the effects of sea level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, and storm surge on the park.

According to the spreadsheet, bottle fill signs were also removed. These displays would need to be “refabricated using an external vendor.”

10. Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in Louisiana

This six-site NPS-managed area protects natural and cultural history across Louisiana, and includes swamp ecosystems, the Chalmette Battlefield of 1815, and cultural centers highlighting Cajun and Creole heritage

11. Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Mississippi

NPS staff removed a Junior Ranger book, flagging it as “disparaging Americans past or living.” This site commemorates civil rights activists, the Evers family, and marks the site of a 1963 assassination that helped spur support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

12. Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming

NPS removed a sign explaining the history of early Yellowstone expedition member Gustavus Cheyney Doane, who participated in a massacre of Native Americans, Outside reported in February 2025. An exhibit panel. Removed as disparaging Americans past or living. The spreadsheet notes that NPS park will install a replacement in-house.

13. Sunset Crater National Monument in Arizona

A colorful, 1,000-foot-high cinder cone volcano makes up this NPS site. Outside previously reported that a sign describing basalt bubbles was said to have been removed because it included an image of a visitor holding a Pride flag.

Dozens of Other Signs Removed Across 24 Known NPS Sites

According to the spreadsheet, NPS staff is known to have removed another 36 signs across at 24 sites, which are believed to still be located at their respective sites. These include:

1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina
2. Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina
3. Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts
4. Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia
5. Acadia National Park in Maine
6. Independence National Historical Park in Pennsylvania
7. George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia
8. The National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C.
9. Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.
10. Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida
11. Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana
12. Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida
13. Christiansted National Historic Site in the U.S. Virgin Islands
14. Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in North Carolina
15. Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in North Carolina
16. Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida and Mississippi
17. Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky
18. Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Florida
19. Virgin Islands National Park in the U.S. Virgin Islands
20. Muir Woods National Monument in California
21. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan
22. Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in South Carolina
23. Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Georgia
24. Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee