The National Trust for Historic Preservation on Wednesday announced its 2026 annual list of the most endangered historic places in the United States, naming 11 sites spread across the country—from New York and California to Alabama, Texas, Michigan and the Southwest—that the Trust said reflect Americans’ efforts to fight injustice and pursue equality.
Carol Quillen, the organization’s president and CEO, said the Trust built this year’s list around the principle that “everyone is created equal,” using it as a theme to spotlight places “sometimes unsung” in broader accounts of U.S. history.
Quillen said the Trust chose a national scope for the 11 sites and emphasized that it wanted to preserve the “bricks and mortar” while also protecting the stories attached to them. She said the list’s examples show how Americans over time have fought against injustice and for equality.
For the first time since the list debuted in 1988, each site on the 2026 list will receive a one-time $25,000 grant intended to help highlight connections to the equality theme and address the threats the Trust identifies for each property.
Among the named sites, the Trust highlighted the Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, describing it as a refuge for Black residents living under racial-separation laws. It also said the hotel housed key figures from the Civil Rights Movement, and pointed to prolonged vacancy, structural deterioration, and development pressure affecting the surrounding Centennial Hill neighborhood.
In California, the Trust named the Tule Lake Segregation Center, saying the site began as the Tule Lake War Relocation Center before becoming a segregation center that imprisoned Japanese Americans deemed disloyal. It said only 37 acres of the 1,100-acre site are protected and that most of it faces risk of permanent alteration from a proposed nearby construction project.
The Trust also listed Angel Island Immigration Station, saying it served as the largest immigration port on the West Coast between 1910 and 1940 and that hundreds of thousands were processed, detained and/or interrogated there because of their race. It said the station is threatened by physical, environmental, political and economic factors, and said additional funding is needed for structural repairs and programming.
Other sites named by the Trust include the Swansea Friends Meeting House in Somerset, Massachusetts, which it described as the oldest surviving Quaker meeting house in the state and built in 1701 for a congregation seeking refuge from religious persecution. The Trust said the building has been closed for years and needs significant rehabilitation.
In Michigan, the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs was among the 2026 honorees; the Trust said the group, founded in 1921, bought its headquarters building in 1941 and that the building has been closed since 2024 after water pipes burst and damaged the interior. It said money is needed to help the association reopen the building.
The Trust also named the Greater Chaco Cultural Landscape across New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah, describing it as an ancestral homeland sustained by the Pueblo and Hopi people for more than a millennium. It said the landscape is threatened by changes to federal land policy that could open up significant areas to oil and gas development, and that it needs permanent protections along with tribal consultation.
In New York, the Women’s Rights National Historical Park was listed, with the Trust saying the park tells the story of the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in July 1848. The Trust said the park faces a deferred maintenance backlog of more than $10 million and said additional funding and support are needed to preserve it as a place to teach visitors about women’s rights history.
The list also includes Stonewall National Monument in New York, where the Trust said the rainbow Pride flag was removed from its flagpole earlier this year before it was restored. It said the National Park Service removed the flag in February citing federal guidance limiting the agency to displaying only American, Interior Department and POW/MIA flags, and that an administration reversal in April came after it agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by advocacy and historic preservation groups seeking to block removal.
After Trump returned to office, the Trust said, the administration ended diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and removed references to transgender people from the Stonewall monument’s website and materials. The Trust also said the Republican administration has placed national parks, museums and landmarks under a messaging review intended to remove or alter materials it characterizes as “divisive or partisan” or “inappropriately disparage Americans.”
The Trust named the President’s House Site in Philadelphia as another endangered property, saying an administration action removed exhibits on the lives of nine people enslaved at the site in the 1790s under George Washington. The Trust said the exhibits were taken down as part of a broader effort to remove from federal properties information the administration deems “disparaging,” and that the issue is in litigation between the city and the federal government.
Rounding out the 11 sites are the Hanging Rock Revolutionary War Battlefield in Heath Springs, South Carolina, where the Trust said only portions of the core battlefield are protected and the area anticipates population growth and increasing development pressures; and El Corazon Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesus in Ruidosa, Texas, an adobe church described as a refuge for Mexican and Mexican American farming communities along the Rio Grande River that has been threatened by a proposed U.S. border wall.
Finally, the Trust said it chose the 11 sites to emphasize how equality-centered histories can be at risk—not just from physical decay, but also from changes that affect how those stories are told, maintained or displayed.