These Historic Sites in the U.S. Were Once Endangered. Now They’re Thriving

The barracks at Angel Island Immigration Station were already slated for demolition when state park ranger Alexander Weiss made a discovery.

For 30 years, from 1910 to 1940, the scrap of land in the San Francisco Bay had served as the “Ellis Island of the West,” a way station where immigrants crossing the Pacific were processed before setting foot on mainland U.S. soil. Migrants came from around the world—India, Australia, Mexico, even hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime came through this Western port—but it was those from East Asia, especially China, for whom Angel Island Immigration Station was more prison than welcome center. With the Chinese Exclusion Act in full force, arrivals from China could be detained for months, undergoing dehumanizing medical examinations and interrogations before being granted permission to enter the country or deported back home.

Weiss, who began working on Angel Island less than a decade after it had been named a California state park, had heard rumors that the walls of the immigration station’s barracks were covered in Chinese calligraphy. Unused since the 1940s, the historic buildings were off limits to the public. Weiss wanted to see the written and engraved messages himself before they were destroyed.

Entering the barracks in 1970, Weiss trained his flashlight on the walls. They were covered in Chinese writing, not just in one room but everywhere, the calligraphy spreading like wildflowers across the dormitories. Most were poems, more than 200 of them altogether, each an expression of the hopes and fears of the Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island.

As news of the poetry spread, a movement to save the Angel Island Immigration Station took shape. By 1997, the site had secured National Historic Landmark status. Two years later, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the still underfunded and languishing site on its annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

The recognition made all the difference, says Edward Tepporn, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, helping to “galvanize the fundraising to undertake a major renovation.” Twenty-five years later, the detention barracks have been restored, an immigration museum has opened in the former hospital building, and the site is thriving.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation created its America’s Most Endangered Historic Places program in 1988 as a way to raise awareness about the threats facing the country’s most important cultural heritage sites. Included among the inaugural list were Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland; the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Big Horn County, Montana; and Vieux Carré (the French Quarter) in New Orleans. Since then, the National Trust has recognized more than 350 endangered sites.

“While designation on the 11 Most Endangered list does not come with dedicated funding, the high-profile nature of the designation does often help organizations attract new sources of funding through grants or philanthropy,” says Jennifer Sandy, the senior director of preservation programs for the National Trust.

In 37 years, only a smattering of listed sites have been unable to be rescued, typically cases in which the site’s historic value loses out to property development interests. Minnesota’s Guthrie Theater, for example, which opened in 1963 and appeared on the list in 2002, was demolished and turned into an extension of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in 2006. The Deborah Chapel, a rare early Jewish funerary structure in Hartford, Connecticut, was demolished by the owner, Congregation Beth Israel, a year after it was listed in 2022. The former Gallery of Modern Art, a nine-story skyscraper at 2 Columbus Circle in New York City, which landed on the list in 2004, lost the battle to maintain its historic integrity when it was completely overhauled between 2005 and 2008.

In its first years, the endangered list was dominated by sites that placed Euro-American history above those of Indigenous, ethnic and immigrant stories. More recently, the National Trust has taken an expanded perspective that tells the full American story, including places previously left at the margins or located outside the contiguous United States. In the last few years, “nearly half of all nominations have represented diverse and pluralistic narratives,” says Sandy.

Indeed, this year’s list includes Eatonville, Florida, one of the first self-governing Black municipalities in the U.S.; Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood, which was established in 1884 and largely demolished following the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II; and Southeast Alaska’s Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses, built by tribal citizens in the 19th century.

Each site is nominated by members of the public, and “places do not need to be nationally significant or ‘famous’ to make the list,” Sandy says. “We’re looking for compelling stories that matter to people in their own communities.”

With recognition as one of America’s most endangered places, even those sites that are emblematic of mainstream American history often present the opportunity to look beyond the dominant narrative. The addition of Travelers’ Rest, the only archaeologically verified campsite used by Lewis and Clark, to the National Trust’s list in 1999 led to telling the details of not only their story, but also those of the Indigenous communities who had crossed paths at the confluence of Montana’s Lolo Creek and Bitterroot River for centuries.

When it was listed, there was a sense of “urgency,” says Molly Stockdale, executive director of Travelers’ Rest Connection, the nonprofit partner for the historic site. The campsite was on private land, some of which was slated for development for housing. After recognition by the National Trust, the landowners on whose property the archaeological site sat agreed to sell it for public conservation. Protection by the nonprofit’s predecessor and, later, Montana State Parks bought the site’s advocates the time to more thoroughly investigate its past. “Tribal preservation and tribal archaeologists were part of this project from the very beginning,” says Stockdale.

“Lewis and Clark didn’t come to [Travelers’ Rest] by accident—they were following ancient highways,” she continues. It was a spring hunting area for Salish people, on whose homeland Travelers’ Rest sits, and a stopover for the Nez Perce on their way to hunt buffalo on the vast northern plains. Shoshone people came from the south to trade horses. “It was just a really important crossroads for thousands of years,” says Stockdale.

The site, which was established as a state park in 2001, is thriving today not just because of its significance to America’s westward expansion, but because it is history thousands of years in the making. In just over two decades, Travelers’ Rest has grown from 15 acres to 65, and it welcomes more than 80,000 visitors a year. “The endangered designation helped to catalyze some philanthropy and giving in our region,” says Stockdale. “It mobilized locals while at the same time getting some national attention. It created some pride of place.”

Other threatened historic places across the U.S. have similarly shaken off their endangered status in the years following their recognition by the National Trust. When it was selected in 2020, Rassawek, the historic capital of the Monacan Indian Nation in what is today Columbia, Virginia, was contending with plans by the James River Water Authority to build a water pumping facility at the site. Being added to the endangered list helped to convince the utility company to move the project to another location, protecting the town’s remains from destruction.

The remaining adobe buildings of Camp Naco, an army camp built along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, are a touchstone for the history of the Buffalo Soldiers and other post-Civil War Black military regiments. But after a century of neglect, the site was suffering from vandalism, exposure, erosion and fire. Since being nominated to the endangered list in 2022, it has secured more than $8 million in grants for site rehabilitation and community programs.

Back on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, the value of the conservation efforts triggered by the Immigration Station’s placement on the endangered list extends beyond the historic site itself.

Remembering and making connections to historical sites, especially those once rarely considered worthwhile by preservationists, lays a foundation for a future built on belonging and inclusion.

In many ways, says Tepporn, sites like Angel Island Immigration Station don’t just share the stories of those who spent time there. “There are opportunities not only to learn about these histories, but also to learn about your own family’s immigration history,” he says.

Shoshi Parks | READ MORE

Shoshi Parks is an anthropologist and freelance writer whose work on history, travel, food and the natural world has appeared in Atlas Obscura, Afar, NPR and a variety of other outlets. She lives in California's Bay Area.