Tule Lake Segregation Center, 1942.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the United States of America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal. This year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places honors that self-evident truth.
The histories of these places, and the efforts being made to preserve them today, represent the resilience of remarkable individuals who believe in America’s great promise of equality.
Now in its 39th year, the list has proven to be a highly effective tool for shining a light on the threats facing our nation’s greatest treasures. Due to the efforts of the National Trust and its passionate supporters, the ongoing initiative has galvanized public support behind more than 350 sites to date with only a handful lost.
The 11 Most Endangered program uplifts and catalyzes community-led preservation work through a high-impact public awareness campaign resulting in increased visibility, public attention, and new resources to save and activate historic places for the public good. This year, in honor of the 250th, each site featured on the list will also receive a one-time grant of $25,000 from the National Trust.
The places featured on the 2026 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places span the country, from rural areas to densely populated city centers. Each of these places has different challenges and needs, but they are all united in how they illuminate stories of remarkable individuals who fought to bring our country closer to its founding aspirations of equality. These historic places, and the inspiring stories they preserve, are necessary so that America may learn from its past in the hopes of building a more perfect union.
The list includes two sites related to Asian American Pacific Islander history:
- Tule Lake Segregation Center, Modoc County, Calif.
Tule Lake Segregation Center stands as a testament to the resilience of thousands of Japanese Americans who exercised their rights to protest and resist in the face of racial discrimination, incarceration, and direct attacks on their identities as American citizens.
Beginning in 1942, the federal government forcibly removed over 126,000 people of Japanese descent — two-thirds of whom were American citizens — from their homes and incarcerated them at sites like Tule Lake. Today, Tule Lake is a place that honors the brave contributions of Japanese Americans who fought to protect the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution.
From 1943-1946, Tule Lake Segregation Center served as a maximum-security prison for Japanese Americans who protested race-based incarceration by refusing to answer or answering “no” to a government-issued “loyalty” questionnaire. For many incarcerated at Tule Lake, their questionnaire responses served as a form of peaceful resistance against a federal government that had violated their right to due process.
Later, over 5,000 U.S. citizens incarcerated at Tule Lake renounced their citizenship under duress, in many cases fearing for their safety and the safety of their families after the war. Thousands of people, including children, were deported to Japan. Most deportees eventually sought restoration of their U.S. citizenship, which was only granted after a long legal battle.
Today, a token 37-acre portion of the Tule Lake Segregation Center has been designated as a National Monument, but the primary 1,100-acre site is unprotected.
For the survivors and descendants of those incarcerated there, the entire Tule Lake site is sacred ground, a place of suffering, where 331 prisoners died. It is a place of community pilgrimage and private contemplation, yet staffing and public access is limited, and there is no adequate facility for larger groups to gather.
After World War II, the majority of the Segregation Center’s structures were demolished or removed, and a rural airfield now occupies 359 acres at the heart of the former incarceration camp site. The Federal Aviation Authority and Modoc County are seeking to construct a 3-mile-long, 8- to 10-foot-high security fence around the airfield, which could permanently alter the setting, viewshed, and archaeological integrity of Tule Lake.
Survivors and descendants believe the airfield desecrates this sacred site.
The Tule Lake Committee, an organization of survivors and descendants whose families were incarcerated at Tule Lake, is leading advocacy efforts to relocate the airfield from this sacred place. Protecting this American civil rights site would honor the people who resisted injustice here and provide opportunities to expand public visitation and interpretation at the National Monument.
In partnership with groups including the National Trust, APAI-HiP, NPCA, Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and others, the committee has generated over 38,000 public comments in opposition to the proposed fence.
Additional partnerships and support will be needed to ensure Tule Lake can be protected and its stories of resilience can be shared with future generations on the sacred site where thousands of American citizens bravely advocated for their rights.
Urge your members of Congress to support the Tule Lake National Monument: https://support.savingplaces.org/page/98129/action/1
Angel Island Immigration Station, former detention barracks.
- Angel Island Immigration Station, Tiburon, Calif.
Located in the middle of San Francisco Bay, the Angel Island Immigration Station stands as a reminder that the U.S. — a nation to which generations of immigrants have contributed — has at times implemented unjust policies toward those pursuing entry into the country.
Built to enforce racially exclusionary immigration laws, the station detained more than 300,000 immigrants, primarily from Asia and across the Pacific. While Ellis Island is remembered as a gateway of welcome, Angel Island tells a different story of lengthy interrogations, months or even years of detention, invasive medical exams, and family separation.
Diving deeper into these histories, visitors will also find courageous stories of resilience, hope, and determination. The Angel Island Immigration Station allows visitors to experience its vital history through the perspective of immigrants and serves as a visceral reminder of our obligation now to honor the ideal of that all are created equal and to continue the work of building a more perfect union.
At its peak, the Angel Island Immigration Station was the busiest immigration port on the West Coast, processing approximately a million people between 1910 and 1940. More than 300,000 people from 80 countries (mainly China, Japan, and other Asian Pacific Island countries) were unjustly detained on the island, many due to their race.
When the immigration station closed in 1940, the site was used to detain 700 civilians of Japanese heritage living in Hawaii and California, and served as a prisoner-of-war processing facility during World War II. In 1963, Angel Island became part of the California State Park system.
More than 200 poems carved into the detention barracks walls by the immigrant detainees ultimately helped to save the buildings. These poems provide a rare first-person testimony of detainees’ experiences and emotions and inspired a grassroots advocacy movement to save the buildings from demolition in the early 1970s.
In 1997, Angel Island Immigration Station became a designated National Historic Landmark. After the site was previously included on the 11 Most list in 1999, California State Parks and the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) partnered to restore the detention barracks and the hospital, which are now open to the public as a historic site.
Although the detention barracks and hospital were successfully rehabilitated, they require ongoing maintenance in order to serve visitors’ needs. Several other historic structures on the island are deteriorating, including the powerhouse, mule barn, and World War II-era barracks.
Due to its island location, the immigration station is subjected to constant wind and weather. Heavy rain has caused leaks in the elevators, restricting handicap accessibility, and wildfires scorched more than half of the island in 2008.
Additionally, the current environment of heightened immigration enforcement has prompted some community members and school groups to reconsider their engagement with the site out of concern and consideration for students and community members who may have previously experienced immigration raids or detention, highlighting the political and social pressures that may affect Angel Island’s long-term stability.
The AIISF was founded in 1983 by descendants of Angel Island detainees and works closely with Angel Island State Park to manage preservation, interpretation, and programming at the site. Approximately 23,000 people visit the immigration station each year, but this is a fraction of the number of visits to nearby Alcatraz.
Additional financial investment and expanded marketing efforts could help increase visitation, improve accessibility, enhance interpretation, and increase public attention.
Also on the list:
- The Ben Moore Hotel, Montgomery, Ala.
- Swansea Friends Meeting House, Somerset, Mass.
- Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs, Detroit, Mich.
- Greater Chaco Cultural Landscape, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah
- Women’s Rights National Historical Park, Seneca Falls, N.Y.
- Stonewall National Monument, New York, New York
- The President’s House Site, Philadelphia, Pa.
- Hanging Rock Revolutionary War Battlefield, Heath Springs, S.C.
- El Corazón Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesús, Ruidosa, Texas
The National Trust is a privately funded nonprofit organization dedicated to helping communities maintain and enhance the power of historic places. SavingPlaces.org