The Trump Administration has ordered the National Park Service (NPS) to remove more historical signs at key national parks, including one at the Grand Canyon and another at Glacier National Park.
The news was first reported by The Washington Post, which said officials ordered signs removed from at least 17 national park sites across six states.
At the Grand Canyon, park staff removed a sign referencing the displacement of Native Americans. Officials also removed descriptions of how climate change is contributing to glacial loss in Glacier National Park, Montana.
The move comes after staff at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia removed interpretive panels about slavery from the President’s House historical site. It’s the latest in a push by the White House to remove signage said to contain “improper partisan ideology,” including those referencing climate change, slavery, LGBTQ issues, and Native American history.
Officials recently flagged signs at Big Bend National Park in Texas that referenced geology, fossils, and prehistoric history, some of which were written in both Spanish and English. In Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, officials also removed a sign referencing Native American history.
Trump mandated the removals in a March 2025 executive order that required the Department of the Interior to remove signs in national parks and other public lands that the agency deemed inappropriate. By June, park visitors reported seeing notices asking them to flag signs “that are negative about either past or living Americans.” Park staff started removing NPS signs in September.
In response to the removals, the Sierra Club announced on January 15 that it is suing the Trump Administration for refusing to disclose how the sign removals are being carried out. Public lands advocates, such as the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), say that the removals are an attempt to erase history.
“The administration is suppressing truth, facts, and science at our national parks, and that should alarm every single American. This dangerous campaign to erase history and science is a tremendous insult to the national parks we know and love,” said Kristen Brengel, NPCA senior vice president for government affairs, in an online statement. “The administration is forcing National Park Service staff to censor everything from climate science at Glacier to the mistreatment of Native Americans at the Grand Canyon, a place of worship and origin for many Tribes. This is a violation of the core tenets of the National Park Service’s mission.”
Organizations like the librarian-led Save Our Signs (SOS) initiative are stepping in to document the past.
“A photograph cannot replace an educational display that has been removed from a historically significant place because the land itself carries meaning. But a photograph can help us remember what used to be there, why it was important, and what we have lost,” Jenny McBurney, SOS librarian, told Outside.
“The Save Our Signs team is continuing to accept photos of signs at saveoursigns.org. To all your readers, please go out and collect photos of signs at National Parks before they are removed, to help us all collectively remember our history – the good, the bad, everything,” said McBurney.
SOS hosts an online database archiving photographs of all sign removals. The group also asks NPS visitors to submit photos of empty spots where signs used to be and of creative responses, like protest art, that have been put up where NPS signs were removed.
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