The Presidents House at Independence National Historical Park in 2020. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has included the site on its 2026 America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.| Photo: Michael Bixler

Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has issued an annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. “All of the sites that have been listed are important because their history matters so much, and they’re having a problem,” noted Rob Nieweg, senior vice president of the National Trust. “It’s an alarm bell, but we intend it as an effort to help solve the problem. The idea is not to demonize them, but to shine a light on the situation.”

The National Trust is a non-profit organization that supports historic preservation through education, granting, and advocacy. In addition, it owns 27 sites around the country and holds easements on several hundred others, which represent a legal interest in the sites. Although the organization was founded in 1949 by an act of Congress, it is privately funded.

To date, their annual list has identified nearly 400 sites across the country, both urban and rural, and in every state, as well as Washington, D.C. and U.S. territories.

To commemorate the nation’s semiquincentennial, the National Trust chose a theme for this year’s list. “We set out to list historical places that have a compelling relationship with the principle that ‘all people are created equal,’” explained Nieweg. “At each of these places you have the history of people who struggled to realize that ideal.” The list includes sites of important events in the history of American women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Natives, and LGBTQ communities. The National Trust staff consulted with local historical organizations to identify the sites.

The struggles against discrimination and for equal rights are commemorated by many of the sites, including the Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, a hub of the civil rights movement, the Tule Lake Segregation Center in Modoc County, California, which interred Japanese-American citizens during World War II, and El Corazón Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesús in Ruidosa, Texas, which served as a community support for Mexican Americans living in a segregated society.

“We’re committed to telling the full American story. Even places that hold the most complicated stories, we need to confront them, not erase them,” National Trust CEO Carol Quillen, a historian with a Ph.D. from Princeton University, told Hidden City last year.

Interpretive signage explaining “The Dirty Business of Slavery” in 2020 and after it was removed in 2026 under an order given by the Trump Administration. | Photos: Michael Bixler

Many of the sites are not in the physical danger of deterioration or demolition that one often associates with the list. “Sometimes the danger is classic, like the roof is falling in, which would cause irreparable harm,” said Nieweg. “This year, these are places where the endangerment is the loss of the meaning of them, because part of the story is not accessible to the public.”

In Philadelphia, the President’s House, located within Independence National Historical Park, appears on this year’s list. Earlier in the year, a White House executive order caused National Park Service staff to remove the panels that told the history of the nine Black Americans who were enslaved there by George Washington when the house on that site served as the President’s House. To date, only a portion of the panels have been restored following a lawsuit by the City of Philadelphia and a judge’s injunction.

Two other National Park Service sites are also included this year, representing the struggle for women’s rights and LGBTQIA+ rights. In Seneca Falls, New York, the Women’s Rights National Historical Park was the 1848 site of the first women’s rights convention in the United States. It is one of only roughly a dozen Park Service sites that recognize women’s history, of the more than 400 total sites.

The Stonewall National Monument in New York City also commemorates a watershed moment for LGBTQ rights–the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969. It began when the Police Public Morals Squad raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, which led to demonstrations against government bias and mistreatment of sexual minorities. It is widely considered a turning point in the gay rights movement.

“We want to honor the people who fought for what we have—freedom, equality,” said Quillen. “All Americans deserve to see their history in their built environment.”

This year, each site on the list will receive a $25,000 grant, as another part of the National Trust’s celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. In the case of the three Park Service sites, the grants will be given to an associated “friends” group, which is usually a nonprofit organization founded for the purpose of supporting the site’s preservation.