While most people come to the country’s 63 national parks to experience head-spinning landscapes, each is also home to a visitors’ center at which one can learn not just the park’s geography, but also the unique history of how it was established and the people who passed through the territory over the years.
On top of the parks themselves, there are also over 2,600 National Historic Landmarks spread across the country.Â
The designation is given to a building, structure or other property that played a significant role in American history or culture.
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A puzzle is seen on a table at Shenandoah National Park.
Veronika Bondarenko
Good at reading handwriting? You can do a good deed for the national parks
To understand this role in a way that can then be presented in an easy-to-digest format for tourists passing through, workers often need to sort through piles and piles of historical documents.
This week, the National Archives branch of the NPS put out a call for volunteers who are good at interpreting cursive.Â
Most historical documents dating back to before or early twentieth century are written in what was the common handwriting style of the time, while the ability of Americans to both read and write it has deteriorated significantly in the digital age.Â
A OnePoll study conducted in 2021 found that 70% of Americans struggle to make out another person’s handwriting.Â
Those who are good at reading historical handwriting in particular can become one of over 5,000 Citizen Archivists that can help make a dent in some of over 300 million digitized objects in the National Archives catalog. To join, one can register online and jump right into interpreting a record that speaks to them.
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“There’s no application,” Suzanne Isaacs, a community manager with the National Archives Catalog in Washington, D.C., said in a press statement. “You just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions. It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”
The transcription that one enters into the system is then double-checked to align with what has been interpreted by another archivist. The portal is sorted both by current missions required to launch something new or get information about a given landmark and topics that may be of interest to a given audience — the Revolutionary War, the role of women in World War I and navy submarine use are some of the ones available on the site now.
“Reading cursive is a superpower,” Isaacs said. “We create missions where we ask volunteers to help us transcribe or tag records in our catalog.”
Want to dig into a national park’s history? You have several options
Many national parks are also home to an archives collection documenting their history and that scholars or even just visitors interested in historical records can come to look through.
More on travel:
Government issues new travel advisory on popular beach destinationThis national park sees the most winter dangersAnother country just issued a new visa requirement for visitors
The only requirement is that visits be scheduled in advance (this can be done online) by appointment.Â
Parks such as Arches in Utah, Gateway Arch in Missouri, Yosemite in California and Yellowstone in Wyoming have particularly extensive historical record collections tracking how the parks were established — the latter of which helped create the script of the award-winning Paramount (PARA)  show “Yellowstone.”
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