The National Park Service (NPS) has doled out around a quarter million dollars in grants to add LGBT landmarks to the National Register of Historic Places even as it faces a multibillion-dollar backlog maintaining the public land it oversees.
Through its “Underrepresented Communities Grant Program,” which is designed to diversify America’s historical landmarks to better include racial and sexual minorities, the NPS is paying several government agencies and nonprofits to seek out “historic” LGBT locations and submit applications for them to the National Register of Historic Places, government spending records show. While the NPS focuses on ensuring the gay community is represented equitably among designated historical locations, it faced an estimated $23.3 billion maintenance backlog during the 2023 fiscal year, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service.
One such grant paid out by the NPS went to the State Historical Society of Colorado, a nonprofit, to survey at least 25 different LGBTQ historic sites in the state and submit at least three nominations to the National Register of Historic Places based on its surveying, federal spending records show. The grant, which was disbursed in April, is worth nearly $60,000.
When NPS approves a landmark to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places, its owner becomes entitled to special tax breaks as well as access to many state and local grant programs.
NPS also awarded Washington State’s Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation $75,000 in April to identify an “outstanding representation of queer history” and nominate it to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, records show. Additionally, NPS paid the state to “research and develop the first historic context statement to identify significant LGBTQIA2S themes in Washington.”
As NPS spends on LGBT inclusion among national landmarks, it was roughly $7.4 billion behind on road maintenance, $6.2 billion behind on maintaining its buildings, roughly $1.6 billion behind on keeping its water systems functional and nearly $1 billion deep in a backlog on trail maintenance as of fiscal year 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Many parks administered by the NPS in Washington, D.C., for instance, are covered in trash and, until recently, some were occupied by large homeless encampments. Michael Shepperd, an outdoors store owner in East Tennessee, voiced concerns in a December 2017 essay that decaying roads and bridges near Great Smoky Mountains National Park could lead to fewer visitors and fewer customers for local businesses.
NPS also issued $50,000 in grants between April 2023 and April 2024 to amend National Register of Historic Places applications for locations in New York City with links to the LGBT community, according to federal records. The agency doled out $25,000 to help the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan resubmit its application, this time highlighting its significance to LGBT culture, and another $25,000 to the Jaffe Art Theatre in the East Village to resubmit its application to the register by emphasizing its importance to LGBT history.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, whose agency oversees the NPS, appeared at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City in October 2023 to celebrate National LGBTQ History Month. “Tell me, in your own words, why places like this, like Stonewall, are so important to telling America’s story,” Haaland asked of “Pattie Gonia,” a self-described “professional homosexual” and “queer environmentalist” who appeared with the secretary for a social media post.
“I think it’s because queer rights are more under attack than ever, and I think if we don’t acknowledge the past, we are bound to repeat it,” “Pattie Gonia” said. “So, at a place like Stonewall, it’s a beautiful place, it’s a place where so much discrimination and hatred occurred against the queer community, but it’s also a place where resistance and queer joy and queer liberation happened.”
The Stonewall National Monument includes a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn that was the site of a series of violent riots where homosexuals clashed with police officers in 1969.
NPS paid out another $50,000 to a nonprofit in Provincetown, Massachusetts to amend the National Register of Historic Places application of the city’s historic district to recognize its significance to gay history, according to spending records.
The agency has spent $7.5 million on its Underrepresented Communities Grant Program since 2014, with Congress apportioning $1.25 million for the 2024 iteration of the program, according to NPS.
NPS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s multiple requests for comment.
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