By Washington’s National Park Fund | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team
The National Park Service’s mission is “to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”
Over the last decade, fulfilling this mission has included a renewed commitment to tell all Americans’ stories by way of a series of “Heritage Initiatives,” each focused on a different group. As the NPS says:
Some history hurts and some heals, but all of it can surprise and inspire us.
Washington’s National Park Fund is proud to join the National Park Service in celebrating the stories of our friends in the LGBTQ community. As part of our Embracing Inclusion project priority pillar, we fund projects in the parks that foster environments for visitors from all walks of life to feel welcomed in these public lands. WNPF has funded programs that bring Northwest Youth Corps Rainbow Trail Crews into the park, supported entry-level NPS positions, and so much more. To learn about our recent projects that embrace inclusion, visit our 2023 Impact Report.
In 2014, as part of this commitment, then-Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced a new Heritage Initiative to engage scholars and community members to identify and tell the stories of LGBTQ-associated sites (such as the Stonewall Inn, site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, and now a National Monument), and to encourage National Parks and other NPS areas to interpret LGBTQ stories associated with them.
Check out the LGBTQ Heritage page on the NPS website; there, you’ll learn about LGBTQ history, access educational resources, and find an archive of almost 200 articles highlighting people and places to browse.
The National Park Service’s series Finding Our Place: LGBTQ Heritage in the United States reflects on how the histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Americans have been historically obscured and erased.
“Engaging with some of the sites and stories related to queer heritage is a good way to begin to understand the history and meanings behind these terms. Through the National Park Service’s LGBTQ Heritage Initiative, we can connect these stories with the landscape. Uncovering these stories gives us a truer understanding of our American heritage, and a new way to see the connections between diverse American experiences.”
From the Midwest to the Pacific Islands, from New York’s Fire Island to San Francisco’s Castro, LGBTQ heritage takes many shapes, and this powerful story series showcases the diverse perspectives of doctors, musicians, painters, soldiers, priests, and potters.
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Among them is a piece about a 2012 project started by Denali National Park Ranger Timothy Rains to give LGBTQ Department of the Interior employees an opportunity to talk about their experiences.
Rains “wanted to produce a video where he’d share the story about his experience working for the National Park Service and how it helped him make peace with his identity, as well as provide an opportunity for fellow LGBTQ employees to share their stories.”
Among the participants was Dael Davenport, an archeologist in the Alaska Regional Office:
“It makes me really proud to work for an organization that is not ashamed of or afraid of its employees or people who are different. It takes courage to stand up for a group of people that is denigrated by a large segment of the population. The Park Service could just have easily taken the stand that since they serve the public and because a significant percentage of the public does not approve of gay people, the Park Service would choose to avoid controversy. But instead, they stood up, stepped out and chose to ‘celebrate and value individual differences.’“
Eventually, more than a dozen employees participated, and one video ended up turning into three.
Washington’s national parks are just as committed to supporting their LGBTQ employees, and to ensuring that LGBTQ visitors feel welcomed and included as well.
Lance Garland, a Seattle firefighter, freelance writer, and guest contributor to Washington’s National Park Fund, wrote a moving personal essay for Backpacker magazine about how his experiences backpacking in North Cascades National Park helped him become comfortable living openly as his authentic self:
Emerson famously said, ‘To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.’ It’s taken me years in society and in the wilderness to attempt to put Emerson’s words into practice. In the wilderness, there’s space for your fear and your grief. There’s space for your anger and your joy, and there’s space for your tears. But most of all, in the wilderness there’s space for you to find your own sort of peace.
Lance’s articles for Washington’s National Park Fund are well worth a read, as well. His piece An Ode to Hiking Solo recounts a solo hike he took in Olympic and his reflections throughout. He has also shared his Washington national park-inspired poetry in “Backpacking Beats”: Poems by Lance Garland.
Like North Cascades, Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks also provide the same kind of space for visitors to find peace – and their rangers have participated in the Seattle Pride Parade in years past, both to celebrate LGBTQ pride and embrace inclusion.
After a hiatus in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, the parade returned on June 26, 2022. Olympic and Mount Rainier rangers marched from downtown to Seattle Center along with rangers from Klondike National Historic Park, personnel from the Seattle Support Office, and staff from Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to celebrate Pride Month within public lands and beyond. Representatives from WNPF joined our park partners at the Seattle Pride Parade on June 30, 2024, to demonstrate that public lands are for everyone.
For more information about Pride across the National Park Service, check out these resources:
Cover photo: Staff and volunteers from WNPF and national park staff at the 2024 Seattle Pride Parade. Photo by WNPF.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on June of 2022 and updated on June 1 and July 15, 2024