Washington, D.C
Women of the Parks: Washington, D.C., Edition
Check out three national park sites that represent significant stories in women’s history — and in the story of our nation.
Our nation’s capital is packed with national park sites telling the American story, from the iconic landmarks you recognize on the opening credits of your favorite TV political dramas to the lesser-known places where history unfolded and rippled across the country. In all, Washington, D.C., is home to 25 national parks and over 100 national monuments and memorials, yet only a handful tell the stories of women.
Although women make up 50% of the population, their stories are largely obscured here in D.C. and across the National Park System. I’ve written about women of the parks before, and during the course of my research I was stunned how few names were familiar to me, even as a recovering undergraduate gender studies major. It felt unfair that, while growing up, I learned about the same handful of women over and over, as if there were only a few who had ever done something worth talking about — but there are so many if you just look a little harder.
I have made it my personal mission to learn women’s names and support their work. In every national park gift shop, I seek out women authors and bring their work home with me, hoping to learn their stories of strength and perseverance and inspire others who peruse my bookshelves to see that the quantity of women’s contributions is as great as the quality.
Championing their stories is part of what inspired NPCA’s “Women of the Parks” bandana, which we are handing out at this year’s in-person Women’s History Month event. The artwork features more than 40 women who left their mark on our national parks. Some names might be familiar, others might not. I hope this wearable art spurs people to look deeper and see how women shaped our world — and our parks.
This month’s free, family friendly event to celebrate Women’s History Month will be the first of its kind. We’re visiting three D.C. sites that tell the stories of women trailblazers, joined by our partner Wondery Outdoors, a gear and apparel company committed to empowering women in the outdoors. Participants will get behind-the-scenes tours of Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with the nearby Vietnam Women’s Memorial from rangers and experts as we foster community and explore the importance of representation.
Here’s what makes each of these sites significant, not only for women’s history but for the story of our nation.
1. Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument
Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument is named for Alice Paul, founder of the National Woman’s Party, and Alva Belmont, who served as the party’s president from 1920-1933. The monument sits on Capitol Hill, next door to the Hart Senate Office Building.
The 200-year-old brick structure is one of the oldest in D.C. and contains history critical to women all over the nation. Descendants of the original owners sold the house to the National Woman’s Party in 1929, and it functioned as headquarters, hotel and second home for some members until the 1990s.
While many people associate the National Woman’s Party with the 19th Amendment, which was ratified in 1920 to give women the legal right to vote, the group’s headquarters on Constitution Avenue became synonymous throughout the 20th century with the women leaders who lobbied from here for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and led international work for women’s equality.
The building’s location is significant: from the second floor, suffragists — and later second-wave feminists fighting for the ERA — could keep a watchful eye on the U.S. Supreme Court, located just across the street. The monument now contains the most complete collection of women’s suffrage and equal rights movement documents and artifacts in the United States.
Alice Paul unfurling banner in 1920
Alice Paul, chair of the National Woman’s Party, unfurls a banner in Washington, D.C., Aug. 18, 1920, to celebrate ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
Library of Congress, photograph by Harris & Ewing
The monument was closed for Great American Outdoors Act-funded renovations for a few years, but it reopened in 2023 with improvements that greatly enhance the visitor experience. New UV window coatings protect the artifacts inside, meaning heavy drapery is no longer needed and visitors can look outside and better understand the site’s location. There’s also a library where visitors can brush up on women’s history or create their own protest banners and sashes.
I found visiting Belmont-Paul to be especially powerful because it is one of the few museum experiences in the country where visitors almost exclusively see women’s faces and names.
2. Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens
Tucked in a residential neighborhood in northeast Washington, Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens is the only national park site devoted to cultivated, water-loving plants. Kenilworth might not exist in its current form today without its steward, Helen Fowler Shaw. In 1889, Shaw’s family started a commercial aquatic garden, which grew from a hobby (today we might call it a side hustle) into a booming business, shipping flowers to as far away as New York and Chicago.
Shaw took over the management of the gardens from her father in 1911. Under her leadership, the business became the country’s largest exporter of cut water flowers, utilizing the area’s ecology to market 63 varieties of plants. Besides having sharp business acumen and horticultural skills, Shaw was the first woman in Washington licensed to drive a truck.
Internationally known as “The Water Lily Lady,” Shaw traveled around the world to bring back new water lilies and lotuses to cultivate.
Shaw opened the property to the public seasonally on Sunday mornings in the 1920s and 1930s, drawing up to 6,000 visitors per day. Shaw and her family resisted the U.S. government’s expansion of Anacostia Park but agreed to sell in 1938 following congressional pressure. Shaw rented her house on the property from the government and lived there until her death in 1957.
The National Park Service agreed to maintain the ponds, and she remained highly involved by training park personnel and giving occasional tours of the grounds.
Today, visitors can wander the ponds, make their way out to a boardwalk overlooking the tidal marshes, and view Shaw’s illustrations, many of which were featured in Shaw Gardens brochures.
3. Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial
The National Mall, known as “America’s Front Yard,” includes over 100 monuments and memorials spread across 1,000 acres of national parkland. But only a handful of these impressive structures honor the lives and contributions of women. This dominance of men even extends to the architects and artists who brought so many nationally recognized monuments to life. Two newer additions are — so far — the exception.
Maya Lin, then 21, won the largest design competition in American history with her submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1981. Originally a class project, her unconventional design featuring the names of 58,000 slain soldiers on 144 panels of polished black granite received criticism and accusations that it was unpatriotic.
The design is markedly different from other memorials on the National Mall — black when others are white, sunk into the ground instead of towering above, no American flags or iconography — yet today it’s the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, with over 5 million annual visitors. There was so much backlash that Lin’s name was not spoken during the unveiling. Fortunately, visitors soon saw how powerful the design was — and remains.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial includes eight women’s names, all nurses who were killed during the war. A nearby bronze sculpture by Glenna Goodacre honors all 11,500 women who served in Vietnam as physicians, nurses, intelligence analysts, air traffic controllers and communication specialists. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, dedicated on Veterans Day in 1993, depicts three women caring for a fallen soldier.
Both sites are places of pilgrimage for veterans and their families — and even for women without personal connections to the war.
A ranger I spoke with described how the Vietnam Women’s Memorial has become a hub for small protests against patriarchy or current events that negatively affect women, as well as for gratitude, often in the form of hair elastics and scrunchies left at the foot of the statue.
The ranger said women feel called to this place, especially for its significance as one of the only sites dedicated to women within D.C.
More to explore
If you find yourself in the area, there are three additional women’s history sites worth exploring. The Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site tells the story of a woman born into poverty who grew up to start a school for African American girls, serve as advisor to four U.S. presidents and establish the National Council of Negro Women. The Clara Barton National Historic Site reveals the life and legacy of the founder of the American Red Cross and is the first national park site dedicated to a woman. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park also sheds light on women’s history through the stories of women captains and lock tenders on the Potomac River.
Wondery Outdoors partners with NPCA as an extension of its mission to be a sustainable outdoor lifestyle brand dedicated to liberating women in the outdoors through awareness, resources and the creation of an inclusive outdoors community for women. To support this shared mission, Wondery will donate 3% of the purchase price of each of its Parks of the USA Bucket List Bottles to NPCA.
The Justice Department has notified D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department that it completed its investigation into whether members of the department manipulated crime data to make crime rates appear lower, sources tell News4.
Multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the matter tell News4 that DOJ will release its findings as early as Monday.
A draft version of the report obtained by News4 describes members of the department as repeatedly downgrading and misclassifying crimes amid pressure to show progress.
MPD’s “official crime statistical reporting mechanism is likely unreliable and inaccurate due to misclassifications, errors, and/or purposefully downgraded classifications and reclassifications. A significant number of MPD reports are misclassified,” the draft report says.
Investigators spoke with more than 50 witnesses and reviewed thousands of police reports, the draft report says. Witnesses described a change under Chief of Police Pamela Smith.
“While witnesses cite misclassifications and purposely downgraded classifications of criminal offenses at MPD for years prior, there appears to have been a significant increase in pressure to reduce crime during Pamela Smith’s tenure as Chief of Police that some describe as coercive,” the draft report says.
The draft report faults a “coercive culture” at in-person crime briefings held twice a week.
“The individuals presenting are denigrated and humiliated in front of their peers. They are held responsible for whatever recent crime has occurred in their respective districts. For instance, if a district had a homicide and numerous ADWs over a weekend, Chief Smith would hold the Commander of that district personally responsible,” the draft report says.
Smith announced this week that she will step down from her position at the end of the month. News4 asked her on Monday if she is leaving because of the allegations and she said they didn’t play into her decision.
The DOJ review is one of two that were launched in relation to MPD crime stats, along with a separate investigation by the House Oversight Committee.
Both MPD and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office have been given copies of the report. They did not immediately respond to inquiries by News4. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. also did not immediately respond.
News4 was first to report in July that the commander of MPD’s 3rd District was under investigation for allegedly manipulating crime statistics on his district. Cmdr. Michael Pulliam was placed on leave with pay and denied the allegations. The White House flagged the reporting.
“D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety. This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!” President Donald Trump wrote on social media.
Trump has repeatedly questioned MPD crime statistics. He put News4’s reporting in the spotlight on Aug. 11, when he federalized the police department. He brought up the allegations against Pulliam at a news conference, and the White House linked to News4’s reporting in a press release titled “Yes, D.C. crime is out of control.”
A D.C. police commander is under investigation for allegedly making changes to crime statistics in his district. News4’s Paul Wagner reports the department confirmed he was placed on leave in mid-May.
D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton told NBC News’ Garrett Haake this summerthat he doubts the drop in crime is as large as D.C. officials are touting.
“There’s a, potentially, a drop from where we were in 2023. I think that there’s a possibility that crime has come down. But the department is reporting that in 2024, crime went down 35% — violent crime – and another 25% through August of this year. That is preposterous to suggest that cumulatively we’ve seen 60-plus percent drops in violent crime from where we were in ’23, because we’re out on the street. We know the calls we’re responding to,” he said.
In an exclusive interview on Aug. 11, News4 asked Bowser about the investigation.
“I think that what Paul’s reporting revealed is that the chief of police had concerns about one commander, investigated all seven districts and verified that the concern was with one person. So, we are completing that investigation and we don’t believe it implicates many cases,” she said.
D.C. Chief of Police Pamela Smith will step down at the end of the month after heading the department for less than three years. She spoke about her decision and whether tumult in D.C. including the federal law enforcement surge and community outrage over immigration enforcement played a role. News4’s Mark Segraves reports.
News4 sends breaking news stories by email. Go here to sign up to get breaking news alerts in your inbox.
Washington, D.C
Senators Seek to Change Bill That Allows Military to Operate Just Like Before the DC Plane Crash
Senators from both parties pushed Thursday for changes to a massive defense bill after crash investigators and victims’ families warned the legislation would undo key safety reforms stemming from a collision between an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash, a group of the victims’ family members and senators on the Commerce Committee all said the bill the House advanced Wednesday would make America’s skies less safe. It would allow the military to operate essentially the same way as it did before the January crash, which was the deadliest in more than two decades, they said.
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz filed two amendments Thursday to strip out the worrisome helicopter safety provisions and replace them with a bill they introduced last summer to strengthen requirements, but it’s not clear if Republican leadership will allow the National Defense Authorization Act to be changed at this stage because that would delay its passage.
“We owe it to the families to put into law actual safety improvements, not give the Department of Defense bigger loopholes to exploit,” the senators said.
Right now, the bill includes exceptions that would allow military helicopters to fly through the crowded airspace around the nation’s capital without using a key system called ADS-B to broadcast their locations just like they did before the January collision. The Federal Aviation Administration began requiring that in March. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the bill a “significant safety setback” that is inviting a repeat of that disaster.
“It represents an unacceptable risk to the flying public, to commercial and military aircraft, crews and to the residents in the region,” Homendy said. “It’s also an unthinkable dismissal of our investigation and of 67 families … who lost loved ones in a tragedy that was entirely preventable. This is shameful.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is looking into the concerns but thinks they can be addressed by quickly passing the aviation safety bill that Cruz and Cantwell proposed last summer.
“I think that would resolve the concerns that people have about that provision, and hoping — we’ll see if we can find a pathway forward to get that bill done,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
The military used national security waivers before the crash to skirt FAA safety requirements on the grounds that they worried about the security risks of disclosing their helicopters’ locations. Tim and Sheri Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines jet, said this bill only adds “a window dressing fix that would continue to allow for the setting aside of requirements with nothing more than a cursory risk assessment.”
Homendy said it would be ridiculous to entrust the military with assessing the safety risks when they aren’t the experts, and neither the Army nor the FAA noticed 85 close calls around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash. She said the military doesn’t know how to do that kind of risk assessment, adding that no one writing the bill bothered to consult the experts at the NTSB who do know.
The White House and military didn’t immediately respond Thursday to questions about these safety concerns. But earlier this week Trump made it clear that he wants to sign the National Defense Authorization Act because it advances a number of his priorities and provides a 3.8% pay raise for many military members.
The Senate is expected to take up the bill next week, and it appears unlikely that any final changes will be made. But Congress is leaving for a holiday break at the end of the week, and the defense bill is considered something that must pass by the end of the year.
Story Continues
© Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Washington, D.C
Bill would rename former Black Lives Matter Plaza for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk – WTOP News
A South Carolina Republican Congresswoman wants to rename a well-known stretch of 16th Street NW in D.C. after slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
A South Carolina Republican Congresswoman wants to rename a well-known stretch of 16th Street NW in D.C. after slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Rep. Nancy Mace introduced legislation Wednesday to designate the area once known as “Black Lives Matter Plaza” as the “Charlie Kirk Freedom of Speech Plaza.” The proposal comes three months after Kirk was killed while speaking at a free-speech event at a Utah college.
Mace said the change would honor Kirk’s commitment to the First Amendment, calling him “a champion of free speech and a voice for millions of young Americans.” Her bill would require official signs to be placed in the plaza and updates made to federal maps and records.
In a statement, Mace contrasted the unrest that followed George Floyd’s killing in 2020, when the plaza was created, with the response to Kirk’s death, saying the earlier period was marked by “chaos and destruction,” while Kirk’s killing brought “prayer, peace and unity.”
She argued that after Floyd’s death, “America watched criminals burn cities while police officers were ordered to stand down,” adding that officers were “vilified and abandoned by leaders who should have supported them.”
But D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton pushed back, saying Congress should not override local control.
“D.C. deserves to decide what its own streets are named since over 700,000 people live in the city,” Norton wrote on X. “D.C. is not a blank slate for Congress to fill in as it pleases.”
The stretch of 16th Street was originally dedicated as Black Lives Matter Plaza in 2020 following nationwide protests over Floyd’s death. Earlier this year, the city removed the mural.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office declined to comment on the bill, as did several members of the D.C. Council.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
Vote For the Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2025
Detroit Lions rule out All-Pro safety, list 7 others as questionable vs. Rams
3-alarm fire burns San Francisco Tenderloin residential building
Dallas County adult probation director out of role amid state audit
The team behind a very popular NYC pizzeria is opening a new spot in Miami
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Video: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power
Kilmar Abrego Garcia seen for first time since release, pledges to ‘continue to fight’ Trump admin
Israel bombards areas across southern Lebanon in latest truce violation
Trump announces pardon for Tina Peters, increasing pressure to free her though he can’t erase state charges | CNN Politics
Video: Hiker Rescued From Quicksand in Arches National Park
-
Alaska6 days agoHowling Mat-Su winds leave thousands without power
-
Politics1 week agoTrump rips Somali community as federal agents reportedly eye Minnesota enforcement sweep
-
Ohio1 week agoWho do the Ohio State Buckeyes hire as the next offensive coordinator?
-
Texas6 days agoTexas Tech football vs BYU live updates, start time, TV channel for Big 12 title
-
World1 week agoHonduras election council member accuses colleague of ‘intimidation’
-
Washington3 days agoLIVE UPDATES: Mudslide, road closures across Western Washington
-
Iowa5 days agoMatt Campbell reportedly bringing longtime Iowa State staffer to Penn State as 1st hire
-
Miami, FL6 days agoUrban Meyer, Brady Quinn get in heated exchange during Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami CFP discussion