The National Park Service, under pressure from the Trump administration, removed key historical context from signage at Muir Woods National Monument. This context included the contributions of women and the racist ideologies of men linked to the park's establishment. In 2021, updated signage had acknowledged the role of The California Club in preserving the land and highlighted figures like William Kent, whose anti-Asian policies contributed to Japanese internment, and Gifford Pinchot, a eugenicist promoting selective breeding. The original caretakers of the land, the Coast Miwok, were also noted in the revisions.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, the National Park Service (NPS) removed historical context from signage that explained the role women played in the creation of the Muir Woods National Monument.
Park officials had added to the interpretive signs in 2021, highlighting the work of a women's club, called The California Club, which launched the first campaign to save what was then known as Sequoia Canyon.
The additions referenced that William Kent worked on anti-Asian policies during his time in Congress, which laid the groundwork for Japanese mass internment during World War II.
Important conservation figures of that time like Gifford Pinchot, appointed chief of what is now the U.S. Forest Service in 1898, was also a eugenicist who believed the human race could be improved by 'selective breeding.'
Collection
[
|
...
]