A plaque and three signs were recently removed from Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park in South Carolina. The signage explained how rising sea levels caused by climate change are threatening this historic Civil War site. It also encouraged visitors to reduce plastic waste.
In Maine, at least 10 signs were taken down in Acadia National Park. Among other things, they urged hikers not to stray from the trails in order to protect sensitive ecosystems. They also explained the significance of the area for the Wabanaki people.
And in Pennsylvania, workers dismantled an exhibition outside Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia entitled ‘Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation’.
In American national parks, plaques and exhibits highlighting the complexity of human history and uncomfortable realities—from slavery to climate change—are systematically disappearing. This is happening at the express request of Donald Trump. In March last year, the US president issued an executive order aimed at “restoring truth and reason to American history”. The order claims that there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.” It accuses museums and parks of promoting a “revisionist movement” that casts America’s founding principles in a negative light. So, all uncomfortable references must be removed.
Now this directive is being implemented across the country. Trump officials instructed their staff to remove or edit signs and other informational materials in at least 17 parks in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Post.
The information gap is growing
What is happening here is frightening. The design of public spaces and the way visitors are informed about history and the environment are being subjected to the will of those in power. How did it go in George Orwell’s 1984? “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
On many other levels, too, the Trump administration is constantly working to narrow the boundaries of acceptable language and information. The term ‘climate change’ has been removed twice from government websites. The administration has taken important data sets down from public websites. It has also dismissed federal officials who were responsible for collecting and analysing climate and health data. As a result, expertise is being lost, and the information gap is growing.
Film footage and photos may be the last remaining counterbalance—at least that’s what Lena Bohman hopes. She heads the crowdsourcing initiative ‘Save Our Signs‘ to preserve national park signage in the digital space.
Save Our Signs: Crowdsourcing against collective amnesia
SOS is a collaborative initiative founded by a group of librarians, historians and data experts in collaboration with the Data Rescue Project and Safeguarding Research & Culture. It is based at the University of Minnesota. Since last autumn, the initiative has been asking the public to send photos of signs in national parks to its database. So far, more than 10,000 photos from 300 locations have been archived.
Many of the signs that the Trump administration has removed took a lot of effort to create. In many cases, they were written by scientists in collaboration with local partners. The signs removed at Fort Sumter, for example, were created in 2016 in collaboration with university researchers who had measured the potential impact of climate change on the site.
The largest open-air classroom moves into the digital space
The US’s more than 400 national parks are a form of large open-air classroom for visitors. However, with every sign or exhibition that disappears, the memory of a less-than-glorious past and the challenges of the present are brushed over. The parks are also in danger of losing their original nature conservation function. During Donald Trump’s second term in office, around 1,000 park employees were laid off at the suggestion of his newly founded Department of Government Efficiency. In Yosemite National Park, the staff shortage has already led to chaos. The entrances are often unmanned because there are no rangers. In addition, rubbish is left lying around without supervision, drones fly overhead, cars park on sensitive meadows, and there are illegal parachute jumps from rocks, as reported by Merkur.
Let’s hope that these times will also pass. And should the tide turn again, the SOS image archive will at least allow the national parks to quickly reconnect with their previous educational mission. Until then, the signs remain digitally accessible, with all photos released to the public and freely available for use.
