Fort Monroe (Virginia): Established 11/1/2011—325.21 acres. Fort Monroe is the third oldest U.S. Army post in continuous active service. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located at Old Point Comfort, it provides an excellent opportunity for the public to observe and understand Chesapeake Bay and Civil War history. It was first known as "The Gibraltar of the Chesapeake" and later as "Freedom's Fortress." Completed in 1834 in part by slaves, it was a bastion of the Union Army surrounded by the Confederacy, a place of freedom for the enslaved, and prison of the Sauk chief Blackhawk and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It served as the U.S. Army's Coastal Defense Artillery School and as headquarters of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. The settlers of Jamestown established Fort Algernon on the peninsula in 1609, and after it burned three years later, successive English fortifications were built because of the point’s strategic value. The first African slaves in the English colonies of North America landed here from a Dutch ship in 1619. More than 240 years later, Fort Monroe became a place of refuge for fugitive slaves. It was a leading Union outpost throughout the Civil War and a springboard for several offensives against the Rebels.

Fort Ord (California): Established 4/20/2012—14,651 acres. From World War I through the 1990s, Ford Ord and the rugged landscape surrounding it on the Central Coast served as a training ground for more than a million and a half new soldiers. By World War II, it was a major base and served as a leading training and deployment center during the Vietnam War. Most Fort Ord’s old buildings no longer stand, but the area around is mostly undeveloped because of its use by the military. This makes it a perfect landscape for the 100,000 visitors who come each year to explore the area's scenic and natural resources, hiking trails that pass through the oak-dotted grasslands and scrub-filled canyons. A plethora of wildlife and native vegetation give the amateur naturalist plenty to observe. About six miles of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail passes through the Fort Ord monument. Bautista de Anza was a Spanish lieutenant colonel who in 1774-1776 established the first overland route from colonial "New Spain"—today’s Mexico—to San Francisco. This expedition by 35 men opened the way for expanded Spanish settlement of California. That was great for them, the climate being fine and the natural bounty of the land being abundant. But it was not so good for the Ohlone peoples, who greeted the Spanish with gifts and partying. Within 20 years, most of these Indians were dead of disease or had been killed in uprisings against the Spanish who grabbed great swaths of land enslaved the tribespeople to work it and be servants.

Chimney Rock and Companion Rock

Chimney Rock (Colorado): Established 9/21/2012—4,722 acres. Around 1,000 years ago, people of the Chaco civilization were attracted to the spires of Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, which rise above the valley floor to 7,600 feet. These Ancient Pueblo People built more than 200 homes and ceremonial buildings, including the 11th Century "great house," the largest such structure in the Southwest. The two rocks held great spiritual significance to those people and to their descendants today, who still conduct ancient ceremonies there. Their structures, many of which remain today, were designed to align with seasonal solstices and equinoxes, and draw visitors from across the world. Hundreds of archeological sites are within the boundaries of the monument. Peregrine falcons soar above the rocks, and migratory mule deer and elk herds pass through the area each fall and spring just as they have for thousands of years. Turkeys, river otters, bald eagles, golden eagles, mountain lions, bats, woodpeckers, and many species of migratory birds live among the Ponderosa Pine, piñon, and juniper.

César Estrada Chávez (California): Established 10/08/2012—10.5 acres. This property in the Tehachapi Mountains is known as Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz (Our Lady Queen of Peace), or La Paz. It is best known as the national headquarters of the United Farm Workers as well as the home of César Chávez and his family from the early ‘70s until he died in 1993. From this base, Chávez was a central figure in gaining basic worker protections for farmworkers. This included safe drinking water supplied to workers in the field, portable toilets, steps to limit exposure to dangerous pesticides, and efforts to obtain minimum wages and access to health care. To achieve those ends, Chávez organized strikes and three famous boycotts—against iceberg lettuce, table grapes and Gallo Wine—which eventually forced some changes in the law.

San Juan Islands (Washington): Established 3/25/2013—970 acres. Part of the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people as long as 12,000 years ago, the San Juans are an archipelago of 450 islands and pinnacles covered with forests and populated by diverse wildlife. Archaeological remains of the villages, camps, and processing sites can be found through the islands. These include shell middens and burial sites. Wood-working tools, such as antler wedges, and arrow and spear points as well as bone barbs used as fishing hooks are common. Scientists have found fossils and other evidence of several extinct species including ancient buffalo skeletons sporting butcher marks on proving humans hunted these large animals soon after their arrival. Europeans arrived in the late 18th Century and there are today homesteads still in use as well as two federal lighthouses and associated buildings.

Río Grande del Norte National Monument

Río Grande del Norte (New Mexico): Established 3/25/2013—242,555 acres. The 7,000-foot high plains of the monument are peppered with volcanic cones, steep canyons and rivers. Ute Mountain is the highest volcanic cone at 10,093 feet. One the volcanic cones in the Monument, Ute Mountain is the highest, reaching to 10,093 feet. The Río Grande Wild and Scenic River has cut a gorge 800 feet deep through layers of basalt and ash. Evidence of prehistoric use can be found throughout the area in the form of petroglyphs, tool-making sites covered with stone flakes and potsherds, ancient dwelling sites dating back 9,500 years, and other sites of note to archaeologists and historians seeking to draw links between ancient human habitation and their descendants still living in the area today. There are also abandoned homesteads from the 1930s. The monument provides an important range for wintering animals as well as wildlife corridors between two mountain ranges, and it has a wealth of recreational opportunities—whitewater rafting, hunting, fishing, hiking, mountain biking, and camping.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad (Maryland): Established 3/25/2013—11,750 acres. Born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, 1822, Harriet Tubman freed herself and returned as the courageous woman she was 13 times to free other slaves, some of whom were family members and others strangers. She fought for the Union in the Civil War and recruited many fugitive slaves to join the fight against the Confederacy. After the war she spent years in the struggle for women’s rights, particularly suffrage. Included in the monument today is Stewart’s Canal, built with slave labor over 20 years and completed in 1830, which provided easy shipping to Baltimore for Dorchester's timber and agricultural products. Near the canal is the Jacob Jackson Home Site, where once stood one of the first safe houses along the Underground Railroad. Jackson was a literate, free black man from whom Tubman sought help in 1854 in freeing her brothers. He became an important communications link in the network of safe houses. Other highlights of the monument are the farm of Edward Brodess, who enslaved Tubman's mother and her children, the James Cook Home Site, where Tubman was hired out as a child doing tasks such as winter wading into swamps to haul muskrat traps. A local chapel and associated African American graveyard is nearby.

First State Historical Park (Delaware): Established 3/25/2013—1,108 acres. Originally established by the president as the First State National Monument, it was redesignated by Congress as an historical park. It is mostly in Delaware but spills over a bit into neighboring states. The park tells the story of early colonial history of Delaware and its role in founding the nation whose Constitution Delaware was the first state to ratify. The Delaware Valley was settled in the 1600s by the Dutch, Swedes, Finns, English, and Germans. Their relationship with American Indians in the region, included bloody conflict and, eventually, the forcing out of the Lenni Lenape people, many of whom were removed into what is now Oklahoma. The monument seeks to preserve the post-Indian cultural landscape of the Brandywine River Valley. Among the notable old buildings in the monument is the New Castle Court House, now a museum, which was built in 1730. U.S. Chief Justice Roger Taney presided there over an 1848 trial of two abolitionists accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act. They were convicted and fined thousands of dollars, ruining them financially. Despite this, one of them, Quaker Thomas Garrett, said upon his conviction that he would not give up fighting to free slaves.

Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers (Ohio): Established 3/25/2013—59.65 acres. The monument honors both the Buffalo Soldiers, six regiments of African American soldiers put together in 1866, and Charles Young, the highest ranking commanding officer in the U.S. Army from 1894 to 1922. The Buffalo Soldiers were used frequently in the Indian Wars in the West, getting their name from some of those Indians because of their dark, curly hair, a name they accepted because of the bison’s fierceness and bravery. They were paid just $13 a month at first, not much, but more than many could find in civilian life. They later played an important part in administering the new national parks before the park service was established in 1916. Born a slave, Young, who in 1889 was the third African American to graduate from West Point, spent his entire career in the 9th and 10th Cavalry units. He fought in the Philippines and rode with General John "Black Jack" Pershing in Mexico in 1916. He was the first African American to serve as a United States military attaché, first to Hispaniola and twice to Liberia. He was was posted for a while to Wilberforce University to teach tactics and military science. He was the first African American overseeing a national park when he commanded a unit of Buffalo Soldiers in Sequoia and General Grant (now Kings Canyon) National Parks.

Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands. (California): Established 3/11/2014—1,665 acres. The Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands Unit, a shoreline addition to the California Coastal National Monument established by President Bill Clinton in 2000, gives visitors the chance for viewing wildlife engaging in other outdoor recreation activities, including hiking and fishing. The Point Arena monument includes coastal bluffs, tide pools, dunes, coastal prairies, riverbanks, and the mouth and estuary of the Garcia River. In a few locations geysers of ocean water spray through blowholes in the ocean terrace and wildlife such as Steller sea lions, elephant seals and harbor seals delight visitors. Rare bird species ply the area's interconnected habitats. Among them are the black oystercatcher, the little willow flycatcher, the yellow warbler, and the black-crowned night heron. The monument covers a portion of the ancestral lands of the Central Pomo Indians. Middens, chert and obsidian tools have been discover. Among the oldest artifacts found in the area are obsidian flakes and other debris left from tool-making dated to more than 4,000 years ago.

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks (New Mexico): Established 5/21/2014—496,330 acres. Like several of the national monuments established by President Obama, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks was the product of a community-led effort including business leaders, elected representatives, conservationists, ranchers, veterans and local tribal governments “to preserve, protect and promote these public lands” for the benefit of tourists, recreationists, and “the wildlife that rely on this unique habitat,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel when the announcement of monument status was made. That diverse wildlife includes deer, pronghorn antelope, mountain lions, peregrine falcons, and other raptors as well as rare plants. The monument encompasses hundreds of archeologically and culturally significant sites, including a few Paleo-Indian artifacts, extensive rock art sites and the ruins of a 10-room pueblo, and other prehistoric buildings. Geronimo’s Cave, Billy the Kid's Outlaw Rock, and sites made noted by the early Spanish explorers. The Organ and Doña Ana Mountains are packed with many hiking trails, a popular campground, and opportunities for hunting, mountain biking, rock climbing, and other recreation.

San Gabriel Mountains: Established 10/10/2014—346,177 acres. Above the Los Angeles Basin, the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains offer hundreds of miles of hiking, mountain biking, motorized, and horseback trails, and campgrounds. The San Gabriel’s rivers keep populations of rare native fish alive, and the vegetation provides food for native wildlife and insect species. The monument includes more than 600 archeologically and culturally significant sites. One of those is the Aliso-Arrastre Special Interest Area featuring rock art giving a panorama of 8,000 years of American Indian history. The mountains are also home to the telescopes and inferometer of Mt. Wilson Observatory, where Edwin Hubble discovered galaxies beyond the Milky Way and Albert Michelson provided the first modern measurement of the speed of light.

Honouliuliu: (Hawaii): Established 2/19/2015—123 acres. Located on the island of Oahu, this monument protects a site where Japanese American citizens, resident immigrants, and prisoners of war were held captive during World War II. It will give generations of visitors a sense of the internment camp’s impact on the Japanese American community as its civil rights were undermined during the war. Honouliuli Internment Camp was constructed in a steep canyon not far from Pearl Harbor. It opened its gates in March 1943 and was the largest and longest-used confinement site in the Hawaiian Islands during the war, eventually holding 400 civilian internees and 4,000 prisoners of war. The camp was largely forgotten until uncovered in 2002.

A building at the Pullman National Monument

Pullman (Illinois): Established 2/19/2015—203 acres. The monument will preserve and highlight America’s first planned industrial town, at a site that reminds us of important social dynamics of the Industrial Revolution, discrimination, the rise of labor unions, and the struggle for civil rights and economic opportunity for blacks and other minorities. The Pullman Palace Car Company, founded in 1867, operated from several buildings still at the site and employed thousands of workers to build and provide service on railroad luxury “sleeper” cars. White workers manufactured the passenger cars, but the company recruited (for lower pay) porters, waiters and maids from among the nation’s population of former slaves to serve passengers. A historic labor agreement was important in the development of the civil rights movement of the 20th Century. A. Philip Randolph in the 1930s organized these workers into the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first labor union led by African Americans to receive a charter from the American Federation of Labor.

Browns Canyon (Colorado): Established 2/1/2015—21,586 acres. Located in Chaffee County near the town of Salida, the monument protects a section of Colorado’s upper Arkansas River Valley dotted with rugged granite cliffs and mountain vistas that are home to a diversity of plants and wildlife, including bighorn sheep and golden eagles. Visitors from around the planet come each year to view the scenery, hike, hunt, fish, and thrill to whitewater rafting. The monument also shields critical watershed while honoring existing water rights and historic uses, such as grazing.

Berryessa Snow Mountain (California): Established 7/10/2015—330,380 acres. In the heart of northern California’s Inner Coast Range, the mountains rising from near sea level in the south to above 7,000 feet in the north, and stretching out across almost 100 miles and dozens of ecosystems. The number of species makes this one of the state’s leading biodiversity hotspots. Indigenous people have inhabited the land here at least as far back as 11,000 years, and their cultural sites fall under the monument’s protection. In addition to all the recreational activities—including hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, off-highway vehicle use, horseback riding, mountain biking, and rafting—the area provides water for millions of Californians.

Waco Mammoth (Texas): Established 7/10/2015—7.11 acres. Once, 65,000 years ago, Columbian Mammoths roamed this land, and their well-preserved remains includ the first and only recorded discovery of a nursery herd of mammoths. The site provides excellent study opportunities for specialists to gain a better understanding of the behavior and ecology of the now extinct creatures that—being the largest of all mammoth species—were dominant throughout North America during the Pleistocene Epoch. Excavations in the area have also revealed the remains of other animals of that epoch—the Western Camel, Saber-toothed Cat, Dwarf Antelope, American Alligator, and giant tortoise.

Basin and Range (Nevada): Established 7/10/2015—704,000 acres. Less than two hours from Las Vegas, the monument encloses a vast expanse of solitude for recreationists while providing significant wildlife habitat and migration corridors. The earliest humans arrived in the region 13,000 years ago. Cultural sites that including petroglyph and prehistoric rock art panels provide opportunities for study and help researchers understand the unique landscape and its human inhabitants. In the past 130 years miners and ranchers arrived to leave their own imprint on the land and culture. The area is now also home to City, an examples of the land-art movement. Some historic uses, such as livestock grazing and military activities continue at the monument.

Mojave Trails (California): Established 2/12/2016—1.6 million acres. The monument includes more than 350,000 acres of previously congressionally designated wilderness, comprises an array of rugged mountain ranges, ancient lava flows, and stunning sand dunes. Among the irreplaceable historic resources the monument protects are American Indian trading routes, World War II-era training camps, and the longest remaining undeveloped stretch of Route 66. Geologists and ecologists have studied the area for decades, with current efforts focused on the effects of climate change and land management practices on ecological communities and wildlife.

Sand to Snow (California): Established 2/12/2016—154,000 acres. Thirty miles of the famous Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail rise as high as 7,000 feet in the Sand to Snow National Monument, which is a microcosm of the geographic diversity of the region, bringing together spectacular landscapes over a 200-mile stretch that rises from the Sonoran Desert to the top of San Gorgonio Mountain, at 11.500 feet, the tallest peak in southern California, one that is sacred to three Indian tribes. Desert oases at Big Morongo Canyon and Whitewater Canyon make the monument a refuge for desert animals and a stopover for migrating birds. The monument includes a wide range of ecosystems, from lowland deserts to creosote scrub and woodlands, freshwater marshes and Mediterranean chaparral to subalpine and alpine conifer forests.

Castle Mountains (California): Established 2/12/2016—30,920 acres. Bounded on three sides by the Mojave National Preserve, Castle Mountains National Monument includes a plethora of natural, cultural, and historical values, including American Indian archeological and sacred sites and the gold mining ghost town of Hart below the 5,543-foot Hart Peak. From the heights of the rugged mountains can be seen vast wilderness areas, and the on clear nights the stars are especially bright in the dark skies of this remote region. The region includes some of finest Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, as well as pinyon pine and juniper forest at the upper elevations. A native desert grassland boasts botanical diversity. Maintaining the monument protects many plant species and wildlife, including a herd of desert bighorn sheep. Wildlife corridors within intact ecosystems provides many opportunities to study plant and animal connections and movement between diverse systems within the context of climate change.

Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality (Washington, D.C): Established 4/12/2016—.34 acres. The Sewall-Belmont House & Museum, once the home of one of America’s leading women’s rights organizations, is the nation’s first national monument to women’s history, named the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. The National Woman’s Party was formed in 1916, but suffragist and co-founder Alice Paul didn’t move the NWP into the house until 1929. For nearly 70 years—until 1997—It remained the party’s headquarters. That year the NWP became an educational organization and made the house a museum. The house’s collection of banners, posters, and historical artifacts of the suffrage era and beyond, which “will continue to be conserved and curated, as it should be, by the National Woman’s Party,” executive director Page Harrington said at the time the monument was designated.

Stonewall Inn

Stonewall (New York): Established 6/24/2016—7.7 acres. Christopher Park, across the street from the Stonewall Inn in New York City, is the first National Park Service unit dedicated to telling the story of LGBT Americans. The Stonewall Inn itself was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000, making it the first LGBT site to be so named. The Stonewall riots, which occurred June 28, 1969, sparked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. The bar was raided that night by the New York City Police Department to enforce a law that made it illegal to sell alcoholic drinks to “homosexuals.” LGBT customers and their allies resisted the police by refusing to show identification or go into a bathroom so that a police officer could verify their sex, and a crowd gathered outside. Word spread and the gathering grew, and a riot ultimately occurred. Thus did Stonewall spur LGBT activists across the nation to organize demonstrations in support of gay rights. Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Park Service Conservation Association said of the designation: “There are places in America so powerful, they helped shape our nation’s history and culture, and must never be forgotten. Stonewall Inn, and the area surrounding this historic site, is one such place.”

Katahdin Woods and Waters (Maine): Established 8/24/2016—87,563 acres. Located in Maine’s North Woods, the new monument contains the East Branch of Penobscot River and an area known for its rich biodiversity, outstanding geology, and excellent outdoor recreation opportunities, including hunting, fishing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. Designation of the site, objected to by some locals and right-wing politicians had support from other elected leaders, tribal leaders, and businesses. It was done to guarantee that the landscape remains intact, which helps support the forest’s resilience against climate change. The land was donated to the American people by philanthropist Roxanne Quimby’s foundation, the Elliotsville Plantation, Inc. Besides the land, the foundation donated some $100 million for operations and infrastructure development.

Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine (Massachusetts): Established 9/15/2016—4,913 square miles. The monument is designed to build resilience in a large expanse of unique marine ecosystems with unique geological features that have been the focus of scientific discovery since the 1970s. Included are three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and four underwater mountains known as “seamounts” that are home to many rare and endangered species, including some new ones found nowhere else on Earth. The canyons and seamounts provide habitat for protected species such as sea turtles and marine mammals, including endangered sperm, fin, and sei whales and Kemp’s Ridley turtles. A study released earlier in 2016 by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration found that ocean temperatures in the Northeast are projected to warm close to three times faster than the global average. And the first of several assessments analyzing the impacts of climate change on fish stocks and fishing-dependent communities, found that warming oceans are threatening the majority of fish species in the region including salmon, lobster, and scallops. Most commercial fishing is now banned inside the monument, but recreational fishing is permitted and red crab and lobster fisheries have seven years to transition their operations to areas outside the monument’s boundaries.

Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Enlarged 8/26/16 from 140,000 to 442,781 square miles.

Pacific Remote Islands. Enlarged 9/25/14 from 86,888 to 408,301 square miles.