Stolen history, sold for scrap — and the dealers who buy it face almost no consequences
The Issue
Historic monuments across California are being stolen and melted down for scrap — and the businesses buying them face almost no consequences.
On Mare Island, thieves hot-wired a stolen forklift and drove it through a security fence to steal the bronze propeller of the USS Nipsic — a four-ton Civil War-era naval relic that had survived on loan from the U.S. Navy since 1967, and had even survived the WWII scrap drives because it was judged too historically significant to melt down. It took thieves one night. The theft destroyed a $50,000 forklift to steal a propeller worth a fraction of that.
This isn't an isolated incident. It's a pattern:
Los Angeles's Sixth Street Bridge lost seven miles of copper wire — netting thieves about $11,000, while leaving the city with $2.5 million in damage. War memorials, cemetery plaques, and public monuments across the state have been stripped for scrap value, often worth just pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost to repair or replace — because they're irreplaceable.
The Mare Island Historic Park Foundation is proposing a program with real teeth to end this outrage: a statewide license for scrap-metal dealers administered by the California Department of Justice, replacing today's toothless recordkeeping-only rules; real DOJ inspection authority to conduct unannounced compliance checks; a decoy compliance-testing program modeled on the state's own proven system for catching underage alcohol sales; the power to suspend or revoke a dealer's license administratively, without waiting years for a criminal conviction; and real-time electronic reporting of every transaction — including the seller's ID, the transporting vehicle's license plate, and time-stamped photos of both the seller and the scrap itself — to a centralized DOJ database, and finally a provision modeled on the United Kingdom's policy of prohibiting cash transactions for scrap metal. That policy was implemented in 2012 and resulted in a 30% reduction in metal theft.
The Mare Island Historic Park Foundation's Board of Directors has unanimously endorsed this call to action. We've lost cannons, plaques, memorial medallions, a bronze bust, ship bells, and a four-ton naval propeller — and we know we're not the only community losing pieces of its history this way.
Learn more at https://youtu.be/WtG5XK6XN4Y
Sign this petition and help us tell Sacramento: license the dealers, and stop letting California's history and infrastructure being sold for scrap
Please remember YOU DO NOT NEED TO DONATE TO VOTE! If you do donate your contributions do not go to the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation.
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The Issue
Historic monuments across California are being stolen and melted down for scrap — and the businesses buying them face almost no consequences.
On Mare Island, thieves hot-wired a stolen forklift and drove it through a security fence to steal the bronze propeller of the USS Nipsic — a four-ton Civil War-era naval relic that had survived on loan from the U.S. Navy since 1967, and had even survived the WWII scrap drives because it was judged too historically significant to melt down. It took thieves one night. The theft destroyed a $50,000 forklift to steal a propeller worth a fraction of that.
This isn't an isolated incident. It's a pattern:
Los Angeles's Sixth Street Bridge lost seven miles of copper wire — netting thieves about $11,000, while leaving the city with $2.5 million in damage. War memorials, cemetery plaques, and public monuments across the state have been stripped for scrap value, often worth just pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost to repair or replace — because they're irreplaceable.
The Mare Island Historic Park Foundation is proposing a program with real teeth to end this outrage: a statewide license for scrap-metal dealers administered by the California Department of Justice, replacing today's toothless recordkeeping-only rules; real DOJ inspection authority to conduct unannounced compliance checks; a decoy compliance-testing program modeled on the state's own proven system for catching underage alcohol sales; the power to suspend or revoke a dealer's license administratively, without waiting years for a criminal conviction; and real-time electronic reporting of every transaction — including the seller's ID, the transporting vehicle's license plate, and time-stamped photos of both the seller and the scrap itself — to a centralized DOJ database, and finally a provision modeled on the United Kingdom's policy of prohibiting cash transactions for scrap metal. That policy was implemented in 2012 and resulted in a 30% reduction in metal theft.
The Mare Island Historic Park Foundation's Board of Directors has unanimously endorsed this call to action. We've lost cannons, plaques, memorial medallions, a bronze bust, ship bells, and a four-ton naval propeller — and we know we're not the only community losing pieces of its history this way.
Learn more at https://youtu.be/WtG5XK6XN4Y
Sign this petition and help us tell Sacramento: license the dealers, and stop letting California's history and infrastructure being sold for scrap
Please remember YOU DO NOT NEED TO DONATE TO VOTE! If you do donate your contributions do not go to the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation.
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Petition created on September 16, 2026