The notion that the country’s most beautiful places are preserved for everyone to enjoy overlooks a complicated history of imperialism, particularly of Indigenous women. In order to bring this story to the forefront, the National Park Service teamed up with a group of researchers who combed through the archives to find the women at the center of the park service's history.
Visit most national parks, and you’ll see, read or hear about explorers, labor leaders or even some of the Native people whose homelands are part of park regions. But few of these stories, monuments or even trail signs feature women, especially Native women or other women of color, despite the roles women played in shaping the landscape and its uses.