Jenny McBurney, a government publications librarian at the University of Minnesota, joined a global response last year when the Trump administration began deleting government datasets and webpages containing information on topics such as “gender ideology,” environmental justice, and diversity. While archiving censored datasets with the Data Rescue Project, McBurney observed a parallel campaign by the Trump administration targeting American history and science within the National Park Service (NPS).

NPS rangers were instructed to identify and remove signs addressing slavery, Indigenous history, and the climate crisis if they were deemed to “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” or promote a “corrosive ideology.” Recognizing that these signs represent publicly funded information, McBurney and colleagues at the University of Minnesota libraries launched Save Our Signs in July 2026. This crowdsourced initiative aims to document every sign across the more than 400 national parks and historic sites nationwide before potential removal.

“One goal, of course, is to take pictures of the signs before they’re removed so we have a record of them,” McBurney said. “But a second goal is that we want to engage the public and make sure that people know that this is happening and ask them: What do you think about this? Is this OK with you? What do you think our American history story should be?”

Isabelle Boelter, a library assistant at the University of Minnesota, described Save Our Signs as an opportunity to confront and protect history that the administration is attempting to erase. Volunteers have documented “before” photos of signs at multiple national parks where removals or alterations have been confirmed, including Acadia National Park, Cape Cod National Seashore, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historic Park, Gateway National Park, Independence National Park, Muir Woods National Monument, the National Mall, and Virgin Islands National Park.

The project has even influenced travel plans, with a family rerouting a road trip from Minneapolis to Montana to visit sites along the Niobrara National Scenic River in Nebraska and the Missouri National Recreational River, a 100-mile stretch of the Missouri River spanning Nebraska and South Dakota.

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