TRAVEL | CALIFORNIA PARKS
Muir Woods exhibit becomes first casualty of White House directive to erase history

By Olivia Hebert,
News Reporter
July 22, 2025


A visitor reads a sign called “Saving Muir Woods” in Muir Woods National Monument on Aug. 23, 2021. The sign was recently removed from the park.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

The National Park Service has taken down an exhibit at Muir Woods National Monument that aimed to tell a more complete history of the site, SFGATE has learned from a former park ranger who helped to develop the exhibit. It’s the first confirmed removal of what the Donald Trump administration has referred to as “improper ideology” under a directive from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued earlier this year.

Installed in 2021, the “History Under Construction” exhibit was an effort by staff at Muir Woods, a 544-acre forest site protecting old-growth coast redwoods in Marin County, to expand upon the timeline that had long been displayed on a large placard. Annotated with sticky notes, the revised exhibit added missing context rather than replacing any of the information. A message on the display read: “Alert: History Under Construction. Everything on this sign is true but incomplete.”

The notes highlighted previously untold narratives: the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo peoples who stewarded the land for centuries, the role of colonial violence in their displacement, and the efforts by the California Club — a women’s organization — to save the forest in the early 20th century.


On the left, a plaque sits in front of the Gifford Pinchot tree, dedicated to a former head of what is now the U.S. Forest Service. On the right is a sticky note on a sign called “Saving Muir Woods” about Pinchot being on the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society, which advocated controlled selective breading of the human population.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE


Sticky notes were added to a sign called “Saving Muir Woods” in Muir Woods National Monument, seen Aug. 23, 2021.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE


A visitor reads a sign called “Saving Muir Woods,” annotated with sticky notes by park staff, in Muir Woods National Monument on Aug. 23, 2021. The sign was recently removed from the park.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Rangers also filled in historical gaps left by the original exhibit. One note referenced 1769, when Spanish missionaries began enslaving Native Americans. Another highlighted that John Muir, the park’s namesake, used racist language in his writings about Native Americans in 1869. Other annotations called attention to Gifford Pinchot’s 1898 appointment as chief of what is now the U.S. Forest Service, noting his involvement with the American Eugenics Society, and Congressman William Kent’s support for California’s Alien Land Laws in 1920, which targeted Asian immigrants.

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