Published August 6, 2026 05:51PM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In July, former National Park Service (NPS) ranger Melissa Dalley stood in a visitor center in Grand Teton National Park, next to a wall where a sign used to be, handing strangers a piece of paper with the missing words on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could clearly see the ghost of the sign,\u201d Dalley told Outside<\/em>. \u201cThe language was still imprinted on the plinth.\u201d<\/p>\n The display she is referring to was once mounted beneath a statue of Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a 19th-century U.S. Army officer who explored parts of the Teton region and took part in the killing of more than 170 Piegan Blackfeet. Dalley documented the now-missing sign, and is sharing its information with visitors.<\/p>\n Since April 2026, she has visited 18 parks, handing out such flyers.<\/p>\n Dalley, 49, was a park guide at Martin Van Buren National Historic Site<\/a>, an NPS-managed location in upstate New York for four years until she quit in 2026. She is now a volunteer organizer with America 433+<\/a>, an education coalition named for the 433 sites in the NPS system. The group is petitioning<\/a> Congress to stop what it calls the censorship of American history.<\/p>\n \u201cI determined that I could serve the Park Service much better right now from the outside,\u201d she said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be muzzled, and I wouldn\u2019t face retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n Her decision to leave the NPS came a year after President Trump signed a March 2025 executive order<\/a> directing federal agencies to review how the country\u2019s past is presented at Park Service-managed sites. Secretarial Order 3431<\/a> followed in May of that year, requiring the agency to remove content that \u201cinappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living\u201d and to emphasize instead the beauty and grandeur of the landscape.<\/p>\n According to Dalley, the Doane at Grand Teton was one of dozens of signs the NPS said it has since removed.<\/p>\n Dalley\u2019s usual process involves standing near a removed sign and waiting for a visitor to stop and read the panels still posted. Then, she approaches them.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, I see you\u2019re reading these signs. Did you notice there was one missing? And here it is,\u201d she says, handing them a copy of the sign\u2019s text.<\/p>\n Dalley is a member of the Resistance Rangers, a volunteer collective of off-duty and former employees. The mostly anonymous group was formed in response to the February 14, 2025 firing of some 1,000 workers across all 433 NPS sites. The courts ordered their reinstatement in March, but thousands more left voluntarily over the following months through buyouts and early retirements.<\/p>\n Her work isn\u2019t affiliated directly with the group, but she says that around that time, rangers across the country were having a version of the same conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were all talking about what\u2019s our red line? What is the thing that is going to push us past our ability to tolerate? Because we all felt compromised morally and ethically,\u201d Dalley said. The sign removals were her red line.<\/p>\n By June 2025, park employees placed notices asking visitors to report signage they found negative about American history. Staff was required to flag their own materials. The first wave of removals began that September, and included\u00a0signs referencing climate change, slavery and the massacre of Native Americans, among other topics.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when Dalley started tracking the removals herself. Soon, people at other parks began contacting her, and she became a hub of information. Sites that had never had reason to talk to each other were now comparing notes, from Alaska to Guam, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople began to see the scope of it,\u201d Dalley told<\/p>\n Outside<\/em>. \u201cWe could just start banging our drums and talking about it and trying to get the public to care.\u201d<\/p>\nDid You Notice a Sign Missing?<\/h2>\n
![\"Melissa's](\"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6259-1-scaled.jpeg?width=3840&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\"\/)
How the Signs Came Down<\/h2>\n