Guardians of Heritage: Censorship and Trust in the National Parks

Where do you think Americans turn for trustworthy history? If you put national parks near the top of the list, you’d be right. A 2021 survey showed that museums and historic sites were seen as the two most reliable sources of history, which has remained consistent since the last major survey about 20 years ago (reference History, the Past & Public Culture by the American Historical Association & Fairleigh Dickinson University). 

Amazingly, people ranked museums and historic sites as even more reliable than eyewitness accounts and relatives, and overall they are more trusted than educational systems. While national parks weren’t named specifically, about two thirds of NPS units were designated for their historical value (reference “Imperiled Promise: the State of History in the National Park Service,” 2012), and many NPS units of all types have museums that address their park’s history.

Why is this? The study named two potential reasons: artifacts and places are considered concrete links to the past, and museums have teams of people involved in creating and reviewing their content. Respondents said they prefer to encounter history directly through sites, artifacts, and primary sources, while they are less trusting of messages about the past from teachers, writers, and other expert intermediaries. Places and objects from the past bring authenticity and direct connection, while team development implies greater and broader expertise and potentially a curb against individual bias. 

These are well-established foundational principles for historians, interpreters, exhibit developers, and others who do historical work in the NPS. Rangers know well to focus on “what happened here,” through the specific histories of their sites and the tangible aspects of the landscape, built environment, and collections that can help to tell those stories. Over time, they move from professional historical overviews to exploring primary sources that can better support and enrich their encounters with visitors. Written materials like museum exhibits, park signs, and brochures are developed and reviewed by teams of subject matter experts, and standards for research and sourcing for web articles have improved in recent years as well. In the last 15 years, the NPS nationally implemented training to shift how rangers speak to visitors from what is often called the “sage on a stage” mentality to inviting visitors to bring their own knowledge and experience to shape the connections they draw from a ranger program. This approach is known as “shared authority,” an important thread in the broader field of public history reference “Imperiled Promise: the State of History in the National Park Service,” 2012). 

Another report based on survey research about public perceptions of history recommended concrete, location-specific examples as important tools for historic sites to avoid more general and politicized approaches to history (reference “Reframing History”). Hot button politicized topics tend to focus on very broad and abstract national ideas, but site interpretation that focuses on the specifics of what happened in one place, and the sources and research processes that we can use to understand that, can keep both historians and visitors grounded and open to genuine exploration of the past. Being precise, accurate, and comprehensive at a specific site can also counter the assumption that history centering whites and men is “neutral” and “apolitical,” compared to the experiences of other groups as “political” or “extra” history, because the story of a place includes all of the stories of all of its people. 

For example, in the last 25 years there has been a major change in interpretation at Civil War battlefields to bring in more current scholarship, recognize slavery as a cause of the war, and use battlefields as places to understand how we got here as a nation (reference “Imperiled Promise: the State of History in the National Park Service,” 2012). As an entry-level park ranger, I joined NPS during the 150th commemoration of the Civil War, and my training included both a mandatory virtual course on the causes of the war, and site-based reading, training, and shadowing. My managers drilled in the importance of going back to primary sources and citing well recognized scholarship in discussions with visitors, while being empathetic to their experiences and perspectives. 

What does this look like on the ground? At a Civil War battlefield where people were enslaved before and during the war, it can mean talking about the life stories of enslaved individuals and freedom seekers in a way that lets visitors recognize the experience of a child, a parent, a sibling, or a friend, reflect on the emotions they may have shared, and imagine the experiences they did not; while these stories tie into generational traumas and must be told with care and respect, they are important for all to hear. It can mean allowing for silences for visitors to feel, to speak up, or to draw parallels. It can mean creating space to hold both the monstrous injustice of slavery, and the individual horror and grief of soldiers on the battlefield, as you walk past and through the places where they fell and pay respects at their gravestones. It can mean respectfully listening to visitors who may have received a different version of history than the one you are sharing, while understanding the historiography well enough to provide solid grounding in sources and counter misleading narratives.

NPS’s public historians use the authenticity of place to make the history parks share more accurate, relevant, and accessible to everyone. But what is happening now threatens our ability to do that, and will ultimately reduce public trust in the parks. Secretary’s Order 3431, released in May 2025, demands that parks report and remove any public-facing content such as signs, exhibits, and webpages that include “images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other information (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)....” This is resulting in the removal of signage, websites, publications, and items sold in park bookstores that address unpleasant realities of American history, such as that white Americans bought, sold, and harmed people of African descent at many pre-Civil War historic sites; that settlers violently took land from Native people, and that human actions have impacted the natural world and continue to do so. Additionally, Secretary’s Order 3416, from January 2025, has warped NPS’s ability to talk about history at many sites by removing the words “queer” and “trans” from websites, publications, and increasingly bookstores and signs and labeling their existence “improper gender ideology.” 

The message of these Secretary’s Orders and their enforcement is that history that tells true stories of Black, Native, and LBGTQ+ American lives is politicized and radical. What is the “apolitical” and “radical” story, then? There IS no single "neutral" story because everyone's experiences were real. “History” is the process of weaving those many voices into a larger and more comprehensive view of the past that is always under construction. Denying the stories of oppressed groups on grounds that their realities “improperly denigrate” their oppressors is a way of erasing their very existence in history. What end does it serve to ban "denigrating" enslavement, racism, and violence in the past? Who benefits? 

If NPS sites were presenting a “radical” and “politicized” history (which has never been the case at any site, regional, or national program I have worked with), the only antidote would be daylight. The surveys cited above indicate that Americans trust historic sites and museums specifically because they offer more direct connections to the past than single author texts or teachers. While signs, exhibits, and ranger programs are mediated versions of history rather than direct encounters, they provide signposts to the authentic places and objects the NPS protects. Visitors who may not trust them need more information, not less. They need the sources and tools to do the detective work of history themselves. Removing information from parks, instead of explaining how and why research has changed over time, will for the first time show that parks are trying to hide something in order to present a one-sided story. I hope Americans are watching, asking hard questions, and demanding answers from parks, agency leadership, and the media.

I’d like to close with the warning that the removal of signs is only the first step. What the NPS puts in not only its websites and signage, but its federal records, archives, and museum collections, can permanently impact our ability to research other stories in the future. Attacks on interpretive signs are an attack on what we can learn at parks in the present. Attacks on what can be written, recorded and archived in the federal government, or on non-federal museums and research organizations doing history, can limit what we can find out in the future. If you work in or with history or parks, save as much as you can. Partner with people who aren't depending on federal funds and can maintain independence. Put everything in writing, on or off the job. Be grassroots historians. Rangers - what’s another hat to wear?