Trump property purge to include national park visitor centers, museums

The Trump administration is seeking to cancel the leases for 34 National Park Service buildings, including visitor centers, law enforcement offices and museums that house millions of artifacts.

The General Services Administration has proposed terminating most of the leases within a year, saying the decision could save taxpayers millions of dollars. But park advocates have warned that the move could harm the visitor experience at national parks across the country, especially during the peak summer season. The 34 locations were included in a larger list of hundreds of federal properties the government was looking to give up or sell.

If the GSA moves forward with the proposal, eight visitor centers would close without alternative locations in place, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group. And several climate-controlled museums would shutter without a plan for sending their rare artifacts to equivalent facilities.

“These closures will cripple the Park Service’s ability to operate parks safely and will mean millions of irreplaceable artifacts will be left vulnerable or worse, lost,” Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement. “Quite simply and astonishingly, this is dismantling the National Park Service as we know it, ranger by ranger and brick by brick.”

The move comes after the Trump administration last month fired roughly 1,000 probationary employees who had worked at the Park Service less than one year. In the wake of these firings, park visitors reported several problems, including long lines at the entrance to Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park and canceled rental reservations at Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg National Military Park.

“Like the earlier terminations, they’ve taken a broad approach rather than a scalpel approach and made complete decisions about anything GSA-owned without giving any thought to what the impacts might be,” said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers.

National parks reported 331.9 million visits in 2024, according to statistics released Wednesday. That marks an increase of nearly 6.4 million visits since 2023, and it breaks a record that stood since 2016.

The Park Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A GSA spokesperson said in an email that the agency “is reviewing all options to optimize our footprint and building utilization. GSA is actively working with our tenant agencies to assess their space needs and fully optimize the federal footprint, and we’ll share more information on specific savings and facilities as soon as we’re able.”

One of the leases targeted for termination is the Alaska Public Lands Information Center, housed in the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center in Fairbanks. The venue includes a theater that shows films throughout the day and 10,000 square feet of exhibit space that allows visitors to delve into Alaska through life-size dioramas, interactive displays, art, clothing, tools and cultural objects.

“If the exhibit closes, it would be a loss to future guests who are culturally and historically curious to learn more about Interior Alaska,” said Eric Segalstad, vice president at Gondwana Ecotours, which brings more than 600 clients a year to the center. “There’s nothing else like it in Fairbanks.”

Outdoor adventurers rely on the center to access information about the wilder side of Alaska, including recommendations about hiking trails based on the weather, season and level of difficulty. The repository for federal and state public lands also organizes interpretive programs, dispenses national park “passport stamps,” sells passes to Denali National Park and provides orientation for backcountry explorers.

“We have a three-legged stool,” said Scott McCrea, president and CEO of Explore Fairbanks, the tourism center that also resides in the cultural center, “and this would essentially be breaking one of the legs of that stool.”

Also slated for closure is a visitor center in downtown Seattle that is dedicated to the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s, when tens of thousands of prospectors stopped over in Seattle before journeying north in search of gold. Roughly 60,000 people have visited the museum each year since 2006, when it moved inside the historic Cadillac Hotel.

“This is not just a visitor center; it’s a historic site in the heart of a downtown preservation district,” said Lisa Mighetto, an environmental historian and author of a book on the Klondike Gold Rush. “The building is a tangible reminder that the gold rush transformed Seattle. It’s the difference between reading about something in a book and actually being in the heart of it.”

Mighetto said the Cadillac Hotel has survived several disasters: It housed many Seattle residents who lost their homes in the Great Fire of 1889, and it emerged relatively unscathed from a 6.8-magnitude earthquake in 2001. Now, she said, it faces another existential threat.

Also under threat is a building in Moab, Utah, that houses 150 to 200 workers with the Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. The workers include maintenance staff who help clear the roads at Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and two national monuments in the area.

The list also includes the French Quarter visitor center at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, which showcases the history and traditions of jazz music through exhibits and live performances. Shuttering the site could “cut off information about the vibrant musical culture that courses through New Orleans, from Carnival to funeral processions,” said Nick Spitzer, a producer and host of the public radio show “American Routes” who was instrumental in the park’s creation.

A handful of sites connected to rivers are also under threat, including the visitor centers for Nebraska’s Niobrara National Scenic River and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, which is housed in the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul.

The latter venue, which informs guests about a 72-mile corridor, is “small and humble” but critical, said Ellen Reed, executive director of the Mississippi Park Connection, the nonprofit friends group for the recreational area.

“About a quarter of a million people visit the national park,” Reed said, “and many of them seek out the visitor center to meet a ranger and hear stories about the river.”

If the park loses its brick-and-mortar site, Reed does not know where they will go to learn about the park, how to safely access the Mississippi or sign up for the kayak share program. Junior Rangers might also miss out on a rite of passage.

“When they put their badge on and take a picture with the park ranger – where will that happen if not at our visitor center?” she asked.

On Tuesday afternoon, the GSA said 443 federally owned properties were eligible to be sold, including prominent buildings such as the D.C. headquarters of the Justice Department. But the agency then removed the list from its website overnight; the webpage now states that a new list will be “coming soon.”

“We anticipate the list will be republished in the near future after we evaluate this initial input and determine how we can make it easier for stakeholders to understand the nuances of the assets listed,” the GSA spokesperson said.