Recent National Historic Landmark Theme Studies

Y.W.C.A. camp for girls, Highland Beach, Maryland, 1930

Photograph by Addison Scurlock/Courtesy of the Scurlock Studio Records, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

African American Outdoor Recreation Theme Study (2022)

This study examines the history and meaning of recreation in Black America in the period from emancipation to the early twenty-first century. Registration guidelines for evaluating potential NHLs and an inventory of existing African American outdoor recreation properties identified as nationally significant is included. Visit the "African Americans and the Great Outdoors" StoryMap for additional content.

Protecting America: Cold War Defensive Sites (2022)

A theme study of Cold War-era sites and properties.

American Latino Heritage NHL Registration Guidelines (2022)

Addendum to the 2013 American Latino Heritage Theme Study providing updated information about NHL designations and registration guidelines for evaluating potential NHLs.

Labor History in the United States (2022)

The National Park Service partnered with labor historians to highlight the many stories and nationally significant places of Americans at work.

Civil Rights in America: Racial Discrimination in Housing (2021)

In 1999, the US Congress directed the National Park Service to conduct a multi-state study of civil rights sites to determine their national significance. NPS partnered with the Organization of American Historians to develop an overview of civil rights history entitled, Civil Rights in America: A Framework for Identifying Significant Sites (2002, rev. 2008). The framework recommended that a National Historic Landmarks theme study based on provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 be prepared to identify potentially nationally significant sites related to desegregation of schools, public accommodations, voting rights, housing, and equal employment. Civil Rights in America: Racial Discrimination in Housing is the fourth chapter in this five-part Civil Rights series to be released.

View the full list of NHL Theme Studies

Overview of Wink's Panorama, Gilpin County, Colorado

Photograph by Thomas H. Simmons