Historic MarkerOur mission
Historic Marker is a public-good index that preserves historic markers as they exist in the world, including how they change or disappear over time.
Our goal is to index, photograph, track, and make available every historic marker on earth, plus a change history showing how recorded history itself evolves.
Why this matters
Historic markers are everywhere: bronze plaques on buildings, stone monuments in parks, roadside signs along highways, interpretive panels at landmarks. They are the collective effort of communities to remember what happened in their places.
But markers fade. They get vandalized, replaced, or removed entirely. The stories they tell get revised or forgotten. Without documentation we lose the markers themselves, and with them the record of how our understanding of history changes.
How it works
Contributors photograph markers, transcribe their text, and note their condition. Each marker gets a permanent record with version history, so we can see how it looked at different points in time. When a marker changes — new text, a different condition, or gone entirely — we record that too.
The archive is free and open. Browse by location, search by topic, or discover markers near you.
Who we are
Historic Marker is a Late Summer Labs project in the Memory segment, focused on preserving what matters before it vanishes.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or partnership inquiries: [email protected]