Summer is here, and many Americans will be taking vacations to enjoy time with family and friends and get away from the daily grind. National parks are often at the top of many vacation lists, and when hearing the term “national park,” most people think of Yellowstone’s geysers, the Grand Canyon, or Yosemite’s El Capitan. National parks, however, are not just places of natural beauty and wildlife. National parks are also places of great significance to American history—both the triumphant and the controversial.

In September 2015, We’re History published Seven National Parks Interpreting Difficult American History (http://werehistory.org/national-parks-difficult-history/). Here are seven more national parks that confront and interpret difficult, complex, and contested episodes or periods in American history and help us better understand how we became the nation we are today. (PLEASE NOTE: A few of these are relatively new sites that currently have limited facilities for visitors.)

1. STONEWALL NATIONAL MONUMENT, New York, New York

Fifty years ago, the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood was a popular gay bar and hangout.  But nearly everything about living openly as a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) person was illegal, and New York City’s anti-gay laws were particularly harsh. Police often raided gay bars, but on June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back. The Stonewall Uprising against police repression was a milestone in the quest for LGBT rights specifically and civil rights for all Americans generally. Just designated in 2016, the monument includes the Stonewall Inn (still an operating bar and private establishment) and the Christopher Park area just across the street from the Inn.

2. WASHITA BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Cheyenne, Oklahoma

On November 27, 1868—nearly 150 years ago—Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer commanded the 7^th U.S. Cavalry in a surprise dawn attack on a Cheyenne village led by Peace Chief Black Kettle. This event was one of many instances during the Great Plains Wars of American troops attacking peaceful and unsuspecting American Indians. This site is one of many national parks that interpret American Indian history and the centuries-long conflict between Natives and European American settlers.

3. ANDREW JOHNSON NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Greenville, Tennessee

Andrew Johnson became president upon the death of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, but his presidency and legacy have proved hard to interpret. He tried to continue Lincoln’s lenient Reconstruction policy, but without racial equality. Johnson was a virulent racist who showed no interest in protecting the civil rights of African Americans and pardoned numerous high-ranking former Confederates—including Jefferson Davis.  In 1868, he became the first president to be impeached.  The stated cause of his impeachment, the Tenure of Office Act, was later ruled unconstitutional, but Johnson’s presidency and legacy are still controversial.

4. RECONSTRUCTION ERA NATIONAL MONUMENT, Beaufort, South Carolina

The Reconstruction Era was the historic period in which the United States grappled with the question of how to reintegrate former Confederate states, with their millions of newly-freed African Americans, into the social, political, economic, and labor systems of the United States. It was a time of tension, transformation, and racial prejudice. Beaufort County, South Carolina was one of the first places in the U.S. where formerly enslaved people began making a place for themselves in free society, and today it stands as a microcosm for examining the larger national events and legacy of Reconstruction. A new site just designated in 2017, the monument currently has local partnerships with the Penn Center cultural and educational facility on St. Helena Island; the Beaufort History Museum; Mitchelville, one of the first freedmen’s towns established during the Civil War; and Fort Howell, an earthen fort built next to Mitchelville to protect freed people.

5. LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Crow Agency, Montana

George Armstrong Custer makes his second appearance on this list.  This site commemorates the June 25, 1876 battle of the Little Bighorn between the U.S. Army’s 7^th Cavalry (aided by Crow scouts) and Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. This bloody fight was one of the American Indians’ last armed efforts—as well as one of their greatest victories—to preserve their way of life against white incursion, and it resulted in the deaths of Custer and nearly all of his troops. One former National Park Service superintendent, a member of the Mandan-Hidatsa Nation, received death threats both at work and at home in the early 1990s when the agency began to interpret the Indians’ perspective of the battle alongside that of the American soldiers and changed the site’s name from Custer National Battlefield to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

6. WOMEN’S RIGHTS NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, Seneca Falls, New York

This site interprets the history of the first American women’s rights convention, held in Seneca Falls 170 years ago (July 19-20, 1848), and the ongoing struggle for women’s suffrage, civil rights, human rights, and equality. Organizers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott designed the convention to “discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.” The convention inspired other women’s rights meetings that continued until the onset of the Civil War. Despite this convention and others that followed, the national government did not recognize women’s suffrage until 1920.

7. PULLMAN NATIONAL MONUMENT, Chicago, Illinois

In a growing Chicago neighborhood, diverse people came together to live and work in a “company town” built in the 1880s by the Pullman Railroad Car Company. All sought opportunity. Some succeeded, but others were limited by race, gender, or economic status. Their stories came together in Pullman, a planned community famed for its urban design and architecture. When demand for Pullman cars lessened during the post-Panic of 1893 economic depression, the company lowered wages but refused to decrease rents, resulting in the famous Pullman Strike of 1894. The strike lasted two months and only ended when President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to break it. A new site just designated in 2015, Pullman National Monument includes the Pullman Company Administration Buildings, the Hotel Florence, and the A. Phillip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum.