Yosemite National Park (Credit: © Joseph - stock.adobe.com)
This Is Where Wildfire Threatens America’s Most Treasured Historic Sites
In A Nutshell
- A first national study mapped wildfire hazard across more than 56,000 U.S. historic places, finding about 5,600 sit in the top 10 percent hazard tier.
- Nationally significant landmarks, only 8 percent of listed places, are disproportionately exposed, with 15 percent falling into the high-hazard group.
- Risk clusters in the West but also shows up in unexpected spots like Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the Appalachians.
- Most historic buildings predate modern fire codes and are hard to retrofit without compromising the character that makes them worth preserving.
When the Grand Canyon Lodge burned in July 2025, one of America’s most storied buildings was gone in an instant. Built in 1927, the structure had survived nearly a century, including a previous fire in 1932 and a rebuilding, before the Dragon Bravo wildfire consumed it. This loss may be only the beginning.
A first-of-its-kind national study published in Scientific Reports has mapped wildfire hazard across more than 56,000 places on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, the federal government’s official list of culturally significant locations. About 5,600 of those places fell into the study’s high-hazard group, ranking in the top 10 percent for wildfire hazard nationwide. Thousands of irreplaceable American landmarks, from buildings and battlefields to historic districts, sit in that zone, often in places many wouldn’t expect.
Unlike artwork or furniture, most of these properties cannot be relocated. When a historic building burns, centuries of shared history vanish in hours. The Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles in January 2025 already claimed the Will Rogers Ranch House and the Andrew McNally House, two recognized historic properties. Rebuilding portions of the Will Rogers property is projected to cost $3.6 million from the state and $1.5 million from conservation agencies, though it’s uncertain whether reconstruction will restore what was lost. The McNally House’s fate remains unresolved.
A Map of What America Stands to Lose
To build the study, researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis laid a federal wildfire hazard map, from the U.S. Forest Service’s fire simulation program, over every historic place in the National Register. Where the two maps overlapped in a high-risk zone, researchers flagged the historic place as exposed.
Risk clusters hard in the West, running through the Rocky Mountains, California, Oregon, and Montana. But the study also turned up hotspots in places that don’t usually come to mind for wildfire, including Oklahoma, the Appalachians, and stretches of the southeastern coast. Arkansas stood out with a surprisingly high number of locally significant places in danger zones. Certain kinds of places are more exposed than others, too: battlefields and archaeological sites, whose significance doesn’t depend on a standing building, showed up disproportionately in the highest-hazard tier, along with structures like old bridges and dams.
Nationally Significant Historic Places Are Disproportionately Exposed
Most places on the National Register carry only local or state significance. But the roughly 8 percent considered nationally significant, the landmarks that matter to the country’s shared history rather than one town or region, turned out more likely to sit in a high-hazard zone than the rest. About 15 percent of nationally significant places landed in the high-hazard group, compared with 11 percent of state-significant places and 9 percent of locally significant ones. Arizona has the most nationally significant places at high hazard, with 78, while California and Oklahoma have the most locally significant places in danger zones. Battlefields stood out with an unusually high share of national significance, which researchers suggest may simply reflect how often these landscapes get federal recognition in the first place.
Why Historic Buildings Are So Hard to Protect from Wildfire
Buildings and districts make up about 90 percent of everything on the National Register, and that’s a problem: most were built long before modern fire codes existed. Old timber offers little resistance to flames, and even stone can crack and weaken under intense heat, sometimes badly enough to make a structure unsafe.
Retrofitting these buildings isn’t simple. Federal preservation rules require keeping a building’s original look, which can clash with fire-resistant materials. Hidden sprinklers, concealed smoke detectors, and managed landscaping can help, but that takes coordination between fire experts, preservationists, and local officials. Sometimes the landscape itself is the problem: at The Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite, the historic grounds depend on specific trees that also raise fire risk, so clearing them for a safer buffer could strip away the very thing worth protecting.
A Warning System the Country Has Been Missing
Nothing like this national assessment existed before. Earlier American research only looked region by region, in places like Idaho, Montana, and Louisiana, and only Italy had done anything comparable elsewhere. Just a handful of states, California among them, have programs built for wildfire threats to historic places, and most states have no dedicated risk assessment at all. That gap matters because protecting these places falls to a patchwork of federal, state, local, and private hands, complicating planning. A shared national map at least makes it easier to see where limited money and attention would do the most good.
Worth noting: this map is a snapshot, not a forecast. It’s built on historical fire-weather patterns, not projections of how climate change will reshape fire risk in coming decades, even though researchers expect that shift to make things worse, not better.
Nearly 2,500 properties have already been removed from the National Register over the years, and the database often doesn’t say why, so nobody knows exactly how many were lost to fire. The Los Angeles fires and the Grand Canyon Lodge are the freshest reminders of what’s on the line. As fire seasons keep shifting, more places may need a seat at the planning table before the next blaze hits. Once a landmark’s defining features are gone, no amount of rebuilding fully brings them back.
Disclaimer: This article summarizes findings from a peer-reviewed study and is intended for general informational purposes. It does not predict the fate of any specific property and should not be used as a substitute for official wildfire risk assessments or emergency planning guidance.
Paper Notes
Limitations
The study’s authors outline several important limitations. First, the analysis covers only places formally registered with the federal government and with mappable locations. Undocumented sites, intangible cultural heritage such as traditional practices, and places significant to communities whose histories are less consistently represented in federal databases are not captured, introducing a bias toward formally recognized, physically bounded landmarks. Second, because the analysis is limited to federally registered places, it may systematically underrepresent heritage tied to non-dominant communities, consistent with longstanding critiques of formal heritage registration systems. Third, the study measures exposure to wildfire hazard but does not and cannot measure the magnitude or nature of cultural loss. A place sitting in a high-hazard zone isn’t automatically going to burn, and the study cannot assign a dollar value or cultural weight to potential losses. Finally, the underlying hazard model is calibrated to historical fire-weather patterns and does not project future fire climate, so the results reflect current conditions rather than a forecast of how hazard will shift in coming decades.
Funding and Disclosures
Funding for this research was provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The authors declare no competing interests.
Publication Details
Authors: Mona M. Farnisa, Benjamin S. Halpern, and Caitlin R. Fong, all affiliated with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara. Benjamin S. Halpern also holds an appointment at the Bren School of Environmental Science, University of California Santa Barbara. | Journal: Scientific Reports | Paper Title: Wildfire risk to United States cultural resources | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-52407-9 | Received: February 17, 2026. Accepted: May 5, 2026.
