Save Our Signs

I went to a Zoom session yesterday for the Data Rescue Project that featured a presentation by organizers of an effort entitled Save Our Signs. On 27 March 2025 Trump issued an executive order (“Restoring Truth And Sanity To American History”) that directed the National Park Service and other land management agencies to remove and replace content that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), or, with respect to content describing natural features, that emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of said natural feature.” A subsequent order gave the park administrators 120 days to remove and replace such content, which worked out to the date of 17 September 2025.

The organizers of Save Our Signs, who are librarians and public historians at the University of Minnesota, realized something had to be done, and launched a crowdsourced effort to photograph as many of the signs in the National Park System possible. By September 15 they have received 8070 photographs from well over 300 parks. They have already documented some alterations for instance to signage in Muir Woods.

I am appalled and horrified by the wholesale erasure of history that is underway, but at the same time I am inspired by Save Our Signs and related efforts to keep history and memory alive, and hope to find my own niche in this domain.

Footnote: in my YouTube feed there just appeared a news story from WBOY 12 in West Virginia entitled Certain exhibits being removed from Harpers Ferry under Trump administration order which says that they “are removing references to slavery” in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Harpers Ferry is the site of John Brown’s famous raid: it’s kind of hard to tell its story without mentioning slavery!