Colorado's Amache National Historic Site is America's newest national park

Amache National Historic Site is now a national park. On Thursday, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland formally established the former Amache Internment Camp in southeastern Colorado as a national park. 

Amache is located one mile outside the Town of Granada in southeastern Colorado. More than 7,000 Japanese Americans were detained there during World War II.

The Town of Granada acquired and donated the land needed to establish the site as a national park. President Biden designated Camp Amache as a national historical site nearly two years ago. Before that, Amache was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on May 18, 1994, and designated a National Historic Landmark on Feb. 10, 2006.  

Haaland said the designation will help tell the history of Japanese Americans at the camp, which was also known as the Granada Relocation Center. It was one of 10 incarceration sites established by the War Relocation Authority during World War II to detain Japanese Americans who were forcibly removed from the West Coast of the United States under the terms of Executive Order 9066.

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"As a nation, we must face the wrongs of our past in order to build a more just and equitable future. The Interior Department has the tremendous honor of stewarding America's public lands and natural and cultural resources to tell a complete and honest story of our nation's history," said Haaland, who visited the Amache site in February 2022. "Today's establishment of the Amache National Historic Site will help preserve and honor this important and painful chapter in our nation's story for future generations." 

According to the Department of the Interior, more than 10,000 people were incarcerated at Amache from 1942-1945, which housed 7,310 people at its peak, two-thirds of whom were United States citizens. Now, Amache joins six other national park sites already established that preserve and interpret this painful chapter of American history.  

The department said that Amache's building foundations and road alignments are largely intact because they have been preserved by Amache survivors, their families, the Town of Granada, the Amache Preservation Society and other individuals and organizations. Right now there is a cemetery, a monument, concrete building foundations, and a road network. There are also several reconstructed and restored structures from the WWII era including a barrack, recreation hall, guard tower and water tank. 

According to a statement, "The National Park Service will continue to work with the groups to preserve Amache and expand scholarship and public awareness of its history."