Jenny McBurney, a government publications librarian at the University of Minnesota, and her colleagues launched Save Our Signs last July, a crowdsourced initiative to document every sign in the more than 400 national parks and historic sites across the United States before the Trump administration removes them.

The project emerged in response to a sweeping campaign by the Trump administration to censor American history and science within the National Park Service (NPS). Under new directives, NPS rangers were instructed to flag and remove signs discussing slavery, Indigenous history, and the climate crisis if they were deemed to "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living" or promote a "corrosive ideology."

McBurney, who had previously joined the Data Rescue Project to archive government datasets threatened with deletion, recognized that national park signs also represent publicly funded information at risk of erasure. She explained that one goal of Save Our Signs is to photograph signs before removal to maintain a public record. Another goal is to engage the public in dialogue about the changes and the narrative of American history.

Isabelle Boelter, a library assistant at the University of Minnesota, described the project as an opportunity to confront and protect history that the administration is attempting to erase: "In a lot of helpless moments, we look for control and look for something to put our hands into. Save Our Signs is that opportunity and chance."

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 effort has even influenced personal travel plans, with a family rerouting a summer 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.

Sources

Guardian US: The amateur archivists racing to save US history in national parks against Trump administration censorship