Since March 2025, more than 100 signs at 41 National Park Service sites have been taken down or rewritten. The changes follow a presidential order telling parks to remove signs that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” according to the text of Executive Order 14253.

The losses are hard to ignore. At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, rangers pulled 34 panels that told the stories of nine people George Washington enslaved at the President’s House. Elsewhere, a sign honoring Black soldiers in the Civil War was quietly edited to drop the fact that the U.S. military stayed segregated until after World War II. Signs at Muir Woods and Grand Teton have also been removed or changed.

Some of this history may be gone for good. A partial inventory the Interior Department gave a federal court listed 18 removed items as “discarded.” These are public exhibits, paid for with public money, and they belong to every visitor.

Volunteers are working to keep a record. Save Our Signs, a project started by librarians at the University of Minnesota, has gathered more than 17,000 photos from 428 park sites. But Americans should not have to rely on volunteers to learn what was taken out of their own parks.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum oversees the National Park Service and has the power to fix this. He should put the 34 Independence panels and the other removed signs back, stop throwing away any more, and publish a full public list of every sign that was removed or changed.

National parks tell the story of the whole country, including the painful chapters alongside the proud ones. Sign the petition to bring the removed signs back before more of this history ends up in the trash.