Published August 7, 2026 03:55PM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Recent court filings show that, amid that process, at least 13 items were destroyed or lost.<\/p>\n
This revelation is illustrated in a NPS spreadsheet<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Former NPS ranger Melissa Dalley has been traveling the country since April, documenting signs that she\u2019s personally seen removed. Dalley, 49, has been cross-referencing her records against the spreadsheet, as well as an internal database<\/a> that was published in March. She told\u00a0Outside<\/em> that she believes the NPS removed more signs than the number listed in the document.<\/p>\n \u201c[The spreadsheet] is by no means complete,\u201d Dalley said. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order<\/a> directing federal agencies to review how the country\u2019s past is presented at 433 NPS-managed sites. Secretarial Order 3431<\/a> followed in May of that year, requiring the agency to remove anything that \u201cinappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living\u201d and to emphasize instead the beauty and grandeur of the landscape.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 2025:<\/strong> Trump signs executive order directing federal agencies to review how the country\u2019s past is presented at 433 NPS-managed sites.<\/p>\n May 2025:<\/strong> Secretarial Order 3431 requires NPS to remove anything that \u201cinappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.\u201d<\/p>\n September 2025:<\/strong> NPS begins removing signs.<\/p>\n February 2026:<\/strong> The National Parks Conservation Association, American Association for State and Local History, ANPR, Coalition to Protect America\u2019s National Parks, Society for Experiential Graphic Design, and Union of Concerned Scientists\u2014filed a lawsuit.<\/p>\n June 12, 2026:<\/strong> U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley ordered the NPS materials be restored within three weeks, setting a deadline of July 4.<\/p>\n July 2, 2026:<\/strong> A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration could continue removing signs and exhibits.<\/p>\n July 22, 2026:<\/strong> DOI asks the court to halt all deadlines in this case.<\/p>\n <\/section>\n Joy Beasley, an NPS associate director who helped catalog the removed signs, agrees with Dalley. In a written statement<\/a> filed in federal court on June 17, 2026, Beasley said that the spreadsheet is \u201cunlikely to capture every removal, revision, or replacement.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe anticipate that it may be difficult to timely communicate with certain park staff that have knowledge of specific removed, revised, or replaced items,\u201d Beasley wrote in the statement. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n According to the spreadsheet, the park\u2019s \u201cGuide to the Gap\u201d brochure was removed for allegedly \u201cdisparaging Americans past or living.\u201d The brochure\u2019s location is recorded as \u201cdiscarded.\u201d When or whether it will be replaced is not listed. A copy of the brochure, available on the NPS website, describes the \u201cintroduction of diseases\u201d that \u201cdevastated the native population, who had no immunities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBy 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,\u201d reads page 19 of the brochure.<\/p>\n Found in Gateway National Recreation Area, the Bay Wildlife Refuge encompasses over 12,600 acres of water, saltmarshes, freshwater and brackish water pond. It\u2019s also one of the largest bird habitats in the Northeast, according to the NPS<\/p>\n In September 2025, The Washington Post <\/em><\/a>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\u00a0the exhibit and in-house staff to install it, according to the court documents.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s vote for American independence in 1776 and also owned up to 200 human slaves.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s policies was replaced with a sign about how he designed his own wheelchair, according to The Guardian<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n NPS removed an informational wayside from the Belmont-Paul Women\u2019s Equality National Monument, a historic house and museum of the women\u2019s suffrage and equal rights movements in the Capitol\u00a0Hill neighborhood.<\/p>\n A Junior Ranger book was removed at the monument that John F. Kennedy once referred to as \u201cthe finest marine garden in the Caribbean Sea<\/a>.\u201d The 176-acre island features an underwater trail for snorkelers.<\/p>\nTimeline of Events<\/h2>\n
Signs at the Following 13 Sites Were Discarded<\/h2>\n
1. Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area<\/h3>\n
2. Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey and New York<\/h3>\n
3. First State National Historical Park in Delaware<\/h3>\n
4. National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C.<\/h3>\n
5. Belmont-Paul Women\u2019s Equality National Monument in Washington, D.C.<\/h3>\n
6. Buck Island Reef National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands<\/h3>\n
7. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia<\/h3>\n