While a wave of firings recently swept through the National Park Service, throwing large-scale tourist destinations like Rocky Mountain National Park into crisis mode, the federal cutbacks also left voids at two of Colorado’s signature historic sites — and sparked concerns about preserving the stories describing difficult junctures in American history.
One site recalls the forced imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II at the Granada War Relocation Center, also known as Camp Amache. The other recounts the infamous Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, when U.S. troops killed hundreds of peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho at their encampment on the Eastern Plains.
While each site had to let one employee go, unease among advocates extended beyond the impact on day-to-day operations. They point to recent government efforts to recast or excise historical contributions of marginalized groups and note worries over the future of federal grant funding — with both raising questions about whether they’ll continue to find support for sustaining painful truths embedded in the landscape.
Meanwhile, more cuts to the federal workforce loom. A memo sent Wednesday from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management to heads of executive departments and agencies offered guidance on submitting two-phase reduction-in-workforce and reorganization plans, with the first plan due March 13 and the second April 14.
The two Colorado historic locations are part of the High Plains Group in southeastern Colorado that includes Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site near La Junta in Otero County. That site did not lose any employees in the round of cuts.
Eric Leonard, NPS superintendent of the group, declined to comment on the firings or their impact.
But sources confirmed that Amache lost a frontline park guide position that had been filled just a few months ago, leaving four Park Service employees to manage the square-mile site that includes several reconstructed structures mirroring the originals. Sand Creek lost an archives technician who had been on the job for just a few weeks and was helping the permanent archivist prepare for the launch of a research center this summer at the satellite visitor center in nearby Eads.
Both employees were on probationary status, meaning they had not yet earned the right to appeal their dismissal under federal employment rules.
Even small cutbacks threaten to diminish the missions of Amache and Sand Creek, advocates for the sites said. Amache saw its staffing drop from five employees to four. Sand Creek’s staff dropped from eight to seven, with three other positions — including that of site manager — unfilled due to the federal hiring freeze.
In the back of my mind, that threat was always there, even with all the progress we’re making.
— Derek Okubo, board member of Amache Alliance and Sand Creek Massacre Foundation
The Sand Creek site’s visitor center in Eads has been closed to the public due to insufficient staff. The actual site remains open Thursday through Monday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Derek Okubo, who serves on the boards of both the nonprofit Amache Alliance and the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation, expressed concern over the impact of the firings, but added that they reawakened his sense of commitment.
“In the back of my mind, that threat was always there, even with all the progress we’re making,” Okubo said. “But it also makes me so darned determined, too. We have to step up even more to make our voices heard, but also to support each site even more — as volunteers, as community members, as board members — to help make sure that things continue.”
“Who can predict anything at the moment?”
The Amache National Historic Site, near Granada in Prowers County, recognizes the incarceration facility that opened in 1942 and closed in 1945, at one point holding more than 7,300 people — about two-thirds of whom were American citizens, mostly from the West Coast — on the fear that they posed a security threat to the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
It was just a year ago that the site — conceived, developed and overseen by volunteers who included survivors and their descendants — came under the supervision of the National Park Service. The move was hailed at the time as securing the future of an important place that, in addition to offering historical interpretation to visitors, hosts an annual pilgrimage attended by many relatives and friends of those originally held there and some of the few remaining survivors.
“We won’t let it be compromised,” said Okubo, whose father was part of the initial effort by the Denver Central Optimists to preserve the site. “We’re here to stay, and we’re going forward. Period. And we’re going to grow it.”
The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site became part of the National Park System in 2000, and opened to the public in 2007. Though primarily undeveloped landscape, the site includes a trail system and offers ranger-led interpretive sessions and markers describing the historical significance of the expansive vistas.
The Sand Creek Massacre Foundation, the nonprofit that supports work at the site, hasn’t met as a board since the cuts, said Alexa Roberts, board member and longtime supporter. But she’s concerned about the pervasive uncertainty of the past several weeks.
“Who can predict anything at the moment?” Roberts said. “It’s unknown what’s going to happen. But I think the parks can count on their friends and their support organizations to help them provide that message to the public.
“The story and the place are inseparable. A person has to experience the place to really totally comprehend that story.”
Although some of the Park Service employees affected by the mass firings across the country reportedly will be rehired, there was no indication that the workers at the Colorado historic sites will regain their jobs.
Concerns ahead of Amache Pilgrimage
The staff reductions come less than 12 weeks before the 50th annual Amache Pilgrimage, expected to draw as many as 300 descendants and others for a weekend of remembrance and activities — including a trip to the Sand Creek Massacre site some 45 miles away. The two descendant groups have worked closely in the past two years to share their stories with each other as they have coalesced around a “shared identity.”
Mitch Homma, president of the Amache Alliance, the California-based nonprofit that works to preserve the story of the forced relocation, said that while conversation ahead of the event has been tinged with concern for what the flurry of job cuts and executive orders could mean, the organization is moving ahead with plans for one of the biggest pilgrimages yet.
“We have a lot of momentum,” he said, noting the program, May 15-18, will feature a few of the camp’s survivors, now in their 90s.
Site manager Chris Mather said that, beyond the pilgrimage, the Park Service is assessing critical staffing needs for Amache operations and how that’s going to affect the coming season. Federal workers from other sites helped staff last year’s pilgrimage and likely will do so again.
Because Amache only recently came under the National Park Service supervision, it has a limited budget, and hasn’t yet established “soft funding” within the agency to address specific programming or projects that would allow for seasonal workers to come on board, Mather said.
The loss of a single Amache employee — a 20% staff reduction — leaves a void, said John Hopper, teacher and administrator with the Granada School District and founder of the Amache Preservation Society. The student-powered program for years worked to maintain the site and memory of Amache before happily giving way to the Park Service and assuming a supporting role.
He said the fired ranger was based in the Amache museum, which the Amache Preservation Society still owns and controls. His presence there allowed the museum to be open for expanded hours beyond those when student volunteers were available. The hours now may need to be trimmed.
“So I’m going to miss him tremendously,” Hopper said of the fired worker. “I mean, I would miss any of the Park Service people. I think they’re all doing an outstanding job. And you never know, this might not be over yet.”
Tracy Coppola, the Colorado senior program manager for the southwest regional office of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, said even a one-employee reduction constitutes “a massive loss” for rural parks like those in the High Plains Group.
“I think of how far Amache came with its grassroots work to really win over hearts and minds in that economically challenged area and the promise of that park,” she said. “The work is going to continue outside of the federal space. I can’t say I know exactly what the impact is going to be. But I know that it’s definitely not going to solve the federal debt problem to take away staff and resources, and the potential job growth, for an area that really needed it.”
Anti-diversity target?
For Amache, another area of concern is that the administration’s rapid cost cutting might impact federal Japanese American Confinement Sites grants that have aided the 10 former camp locations across the Western U.S. Those grants have allowed various nongovernmental organizations to pursue a variety of projects, said David Inoue, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Japanese American Citizens League.
At Amache, JACS grants — combined with required matching funds — have paid for everything from site interpretation to reconstruction of historical structures and totaled more than $1.6 million as of 2023.
“It largely supports preservation of stories related to the incarceration experience,” Inoue said. “So it’s not just necessarily building a root cellar or building a baseball field or a basketball court, but it also means, how do we tell the stories of the people who were incarcerated at that camp?”
He noted that it has been 83 years since the signing of Executive Order 9066 created the incarceration camps, and the number of survivors to pass down firsthand accounts has dwindled, making the variety of site projects and the stories they tell increasingly important.
So far, the grant money has remained in place. But Inoue feels under threat by the current administration, especially after what he sees as troubling actions taken in its early days.
The broad directive that agencies are supposed to look at anything that might be related to diversity certainly puts us in the bull’s-eye.
— David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League
Shortly after President Trump took office, his flurry of executive orders included one calling for an end to federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Reacting to the order, the Air Force removed training videos featuring the Tuskegee Airmen, the World War II-era Black pilot squadron that helped break down racial barriers in the military.
That scrubbing of history was reversed quickly after bipartisan criticism. And while Inoue found the reaction encouraging, he remains concerned that the administration’s sometimes vague pronouncements are subject to interpretation.
“The broad directive that agencies are supposed to look at anything that might be related to diversity certainly puts us in the bull’s-eye,” he said of the JACS grant program. “I would hope that the interpretation of that directive would be that this isn’t necessarily a matter of diversity, but this is a matter of our American history.”
One source familiar with operations at the sites, who requested anonymity to speak freely, noted that Sand Creek harbors similar concerns.
“That fear is there. That site is about white Americans going after a second group,” they said. “That is a hard story to tell. But when they’re trying to make it so that we don’t show white as bad, how can we keep telling our story, if we have to make it so white is not bad when it very much was?”
Another example of government recasting history unfolded several days ago. Protesters rallied at the Stonewall National Monument, which recognizes the gay bar in New York where a 1969 police raid triggered a riot and launched a civil rights movement, after the official Stonewall website abruptly erased references to transgender individuals. References to LBGTQ+ were reduced to LGB after a Trump executive order told federal agencies to remove “gender ideology” from websites. Critics of the move said transgender people played a crucial role at Stonewall.
Inoue noted that it would be hard to rewrite Amache’s history without actually lying about what happened. Not that it would be anything new.
“Our experience is essentially founded upon the fact that the government lied,” Inoue said. “The government said that Japanese Americans were a security threat to our nation, and that is why we needed to be placed in concentration camps. The thing that is particularly telling about our experience is that, yes, our government has the capacity to lie. And do we have the people who are willing to stand up to that?”
Whatever happens at the federal level, Amache has always had a staunch ally in Hopper, the teacher who founded the Amache Preservation Society, when it comes to faithfully passing down the history of the incarceration camp that now moves forward under National Park Service supervision, though with one fewer ranger than before.
“All we’re doing is talking about the facts and the truth of what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II,” Hopper said. “If you start canceling history, then we’re in trouble. All of us. I guess it’s a good test case.
“I’ll tell you what,” he added. “If something comes down the pike where they’re trying to muscle me, I guarantee you I’m not going to go down without a fight.”