HALF OF AMERICA'S HISTORIC LANDMARKS FACE WILDFIRE RISK

More than half of the 100,117 sites listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places face measurable wildfire exposure, according to research published in Scientific Reports. Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara's National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis completed the first national-scale assessment of wildfire risk to American cultural heritage, cross-referencing every mappable registered site with high-resolution wildfire burn probability models. For 3,446 places, the risk is classified as severe. The study was prompted in part by recent losses: the Palisades Fire destroyed the Will Rogers Ranch House in Los Angeles in January 2025, and the Dragon Bravo wildfire burned through Grand Canyon National Park and destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge, originally built in 1927.

Risk concentrates most heavily in the western United States, with additional hotspots in Oklahoma, Arkansas and along the southeastern coast. Buildings and historic districts, which account for 90 per cent of all listed resources, face particularly acute risk because their cultural value is inseparable from their physical form. California, New Mexico, Colorado and Oklahoma show especially high concentrations of at-risk sites. Nationally significant sites face disproportionately high wildfire exposure relative to state- and locally significant ones, meaning America's most important historic places rank among its most vulnerable.

Researchers emphasised that historic landmarks cannot be simply rebuilt once destroyed. According to Caitlin Fong, corresponding author of the study, these places "anchor community identity, collective memory and national heritage" and "in many cases, once lost, they are gone forever." Whether either of the two recently destroyed landmarks will be meaningfully restored remains uncertain, according to the source material.