Parks
Since 1916, the American people have entrusted the National Park Service with the care of their national parks. With the help of volunteers and park partners, we safeguard these more than 400 places and share their stories with more than 275 million visitors every year. Find a few of those stories here and then Find a Park to find more of all Americans' stories.Since the 1930s, children with disabilities have attended Camp Greentop in Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland. In 1936, the National Park Service invited the Maryland League of Crippled Children to use their camp space. At that time, only 24 camps for children with disabilities existed in the United States. Camp Greentop remains active today.
Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Hawai'i contains what was once a forced isolation center for people with leprosy (now more properly known as Hansen's disease). This is a contagious condition that affects the skin and nervous system. Until the 1940s, there was no effective medical treatment. From the 1860s through the 1960s, over 8,000 people with Hansen's disease were sent to the isolation center. In 1980, the National Park Service established Kalaupapa National Historical Park, encompassing both the isolation center and its surrounding landscape. The park works with local descendants and community to help interpret and represent this troubled history.
Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York and Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Church Creek, Maryland share Tubman's dedication to public service over her lifetime. She helped dozens of families escape slavery and move to the north. A childhood trauma influenced Tubman's decision to rescue others. Born into slavery, Tubman was attacked by a slave owner, receiving significant wounds to her head. The injury resulted in lifelong seizures and narcoleptic episodes. She described these as visions in which she communicated with God. Tubman claimed these spells inspired her life's work to abolish slavery.
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the National Mall in DC commemorates this president who played a significant role in the history of the United States and of the National Park Service. In 1934, he said, "There is nothing so American as our national parks.... The fundamental idea behind the parks...is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.” Included in the memorial is a statue of FDR in his wheelchair. He required a wheelchair after a childhood illness.
Other Places
The National Park Service cares for America's more than 400 national parks…and works in almost every one of her 3,141 counties. We are proud that tribes, local governments, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individual citizens ask for our help in revitalizing their communities, preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, and creating close to home opportunities for kids and families to get outside, be active, and have fun. Find a few selected important places outside the parks here and explore the links for more. Then explore what you can do to share your own stories and the places that matter to you.
The Volta Laboratory and Bureau building, a National Historic Landmark in Washington, DC, was constructed in 1893 under the direction of Alexander Graham Bell to serve as a center of information for deaf and hard of hearing persons. Bell, best known for receiving the first telephone patent in 1876, was also an outstanding figure of his generation in the education of the deaf.
Dr. Bob’s Home in Akron, Ohio is nationally significant for its central role in the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a global organization whose mission is to assist alcoholics in achieving and maintaining sobriety. Along with William Griffith Wilson (Bill W.), Robert Smith is considered a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The establishment of AA marked a turning point in the history of alcoholism and its treatment.
Three of the structures located at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama -- the cottage, the main house, and water pump -- served as the birthplace, early childhood home, and site of communication breakthrough for Helen Adams Keller. The homestead was the site of the pivotal experiences which led up to Keller's emergence in the forefront of the effort to provide better methods and facilities to educate people with disabilities.
Established in 1867, the Northwestern Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (now the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center) was the second of the original three branches established by the newly formed Board of Managers. Located on the west side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 400 acre campus sits just south of the Milwaukee Brewer’s Miller Park baseball stadium and the Silurian Fossil Reef, a geological site designated as the Soldiers’ Home Reef National Historic Landmark.
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Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, has a deep connection to disability and incarceration. For much of the early 1900s, New Yorkers nicknamed the island Welfare Island after the asylums, prisons, and almshouses that were built there. While most of the buildings have long since fallen into disrepair, the ruins are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Danvers State Hospital, an extensive mental health care facility established in 1874, reflects changing attitudes toward treatment of “the insane” in its exceptionally well-preserved buildings and grounds. It is dominated by the 1874 Kirkbride Complex, a huge brick with granite trim structure designed by noted Boston architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee in the Victorian Gothic style.
Rockhaven Sanitarium Historic District is one of the best extant examples of an early twentieth century woman-owned, women-serving private sanitarium in California. It was one of the first of its type in the nation. It reflects the vision of Agnes Richards, R.N., and represents a small but significant movement that sought to improve the conditions of mentally ill women in the early twentieth century.
- Locations: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, National Mall and Memorial Parks
The four open-air rooms of the FDR Memorial represent each of the four terms of office to which he was elected. A meandering pathway leads past waterfalls, bronze sculptures, and his own powerful words carved on the granite walls. A statue of Roosevelt sitting in a wheelchair greets visitors and reminds them of the man who refused to let disability stop him.
The Weston Hospital is one of a small number of nineteenth-century institutions that survive in America to illustrate the great reforms in the treatment of mental patients. The importance of this movement attracted some of the greatest architects of the 19th century in America.
The Wrentham State School was authorized in 1906 as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ second school for the "feeble-minded." It was considered an outstanding institution for children, at least through the mid-twentieth century.
- Offices: Cultural Resources, National Historic Landmarks Program, National Register of Historic Places Program, Regions 3, 4, and 5
Dr. Bob’s Home is nationally significant under NHL Criteria 1 and 2. Due to its central role in the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a global organization whose mission is to assist alcoholics in achieving and maintaining sobriety, the site meets NHL Criterion 1.
Taunton State Hospital was established in 1851 as the Taunton Lunatic Asylum. It was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' second facility for the insane, following Worcester (1833).
Tewksbury State Hospital was established in 1852 as one of three state almshouses, along with Bridgewater and Monson. The almshouses represented the state's first venture into care of the poor, a role exclusively filled by the cities and towns up to that time.
The Volta Laboratory and Bureau building, a National Historic Landmark, was constructed in 1893 under the direction of Alexander Graham Bell to serve as a center of information for deaf and hard of hearing persons. Bell, best known for receiving the first telephone patent in 1876, was also an outstanding figure of his generation in the education of the deaf.
Tags:
disability history
Last updated: May 25, 2021