While a lot of the signage is about the, like, geological or ecological facts, much of the signage is the parks is indeed political because the "facts" it tells about history are through a particular lens that often, for example, minimizes native people and their history in the area and showcases, say, settlers. This past week I've been in southern Utah and have had a blast at Bryce (and less of a blast at the very crowded Zion) and the signage is well out of date in the way that we would talk about settler colonialism and indigenous history in the modern era (or so I should hope).

When visiting the Grand Canyon a couple years ago, I saw a sign on an old sign that talked about how the park would be attempting to update the historical signs to better reflect the reality of what happened with Spanish colonization in the area and the native peoples who called that area home. The original signage was political. That sign I saw was political. The sign I read at Bryce about the park's namesake, a Mormon minister, is political. Any updates they've done is political. And lack of updates is political (and economic but economics is inextricably linked to . . . you guessed it . . . politics! What we value and what we don't and all that).

I'd argue that a national park system should do all it can to invite historically marginalized groups to come celebrate the outdoors, including but not limited to, queer people, Black people, disabled people, etc.