Univ. of Minnesota seeks photos to archive national parks signs before removal

13 hours ago 1

The National Park Service is the nation’s largest outdoor history classroom. Spanning 400 sites, the Parks work tirelessly to fulfill their legal mandate to steward our nation’s stories and make them accessible to all Americans. 

Real history is not just happy stories. But the Secretary of the Interior is asking Americans to report signs in the Parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” This grows out of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which seeks to erase “negative” stories from public view. Content deemed inappropriate has been ordered to be removed by September 17, 2025

Join our effort to build a community archive of the signs, exhibits, and texts that could soon disappear from our national parks.


QR code to the photo submission form:

This summer, let’s Save Our Signs. 

Take photos of any signage.

Upload those images here.


Together we will preserve the full story of our nation. 

Visit the Photo Counter to see how many photos we have saved so far!

  • Photos of interpretive signs, exhibits, or text from areas administered by the National Park Service.

      • For example, this includes: National Parks, National Historic Sites, National Monuments, National Memorials, National Battlefields, National Trails, National Lakeshores, and other public lands.

  • Please make sure that your photo clearly shows the text and that the text is readable.

  • Please do not upload photos with people in them. These photos will become part of a public photo collection, so we want to protect everyone’s privacy.  If you accidentally submit a photo with people in it, we will likely exclude it from the public photo collection.

  • The Save Our Signs project reserves the right to exclude any submitted images in the public photo collection that may violate privacy or otherwise be out of scope or inappropriate for this project.

Anyone can submit a photo of a sign or placard with the submission form. We will make the data publicly available by October 13, 2025. This is a community project with user-submitted information. We cannot guarantee that entries are accurate or complete, but we will do our best to edit entries for clarity.  

Important Note about Privacy:  

This data is being collected using an institutional license of Qualtrics.  We will not collect or publish identifying information in the public photo collection such as names or other personal information. However, we cannot guarantee anonymity due to technical and/or legal factors outside of our control. The photos themselves might contain identifying information, such as EXIF data (exchangeable image file format). We are not deliberately collecting or sharing any personal data, but the file you upload may contain identifying information unless you remove it. 

Read Entire Article