News & Announcements
September 30, 2026
ASLH Letter regarding closure of San Francisco/San Bruno, CA, and Chicago, IL, NARA sites
September 30, 2026
Dr. Bradford Wilson
Archivist of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001
Dear Dr. Wilson:
In July 2026, the National Archives and Records Administration announced that it will be closing its branches at San Francisco/San Bruno, CA and Chicago, IL. NARA cites financial considerations (upkeep of buildings) and lack of space for its reasons in closing these facilities. In August 2026, NARA announced that it will be splitting the collections up to be housed at different branches (Riverside, Denver, College Park, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Boston, Fort Worth, Atlanta).
These proposed closures and dispersals are deeply concerning. NARA San Francisco/San Bruno contain invaluable records from California, Nevada, Hawaii, American Samoa, and the Pacific Territories. They include materials relating to the enforcement of Chinese exclusion and other immigration laws, naturalization records, the case files of the local federal courts, the U.S. role in the Pacific, the history of Hawaii and Samoa, genealogical records, US military operations in the Pacific, the Bureau of Indian Affairs records for California tribes, and more. NARA Chicago contains records from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin and includes rich material about the federal courts, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Coast Guard.
As the principal organization representing legal historians in the United States, we are seriously alarmed for the following reasons:
- Dividing collections that cohere geographically and spreading them to disparate NARA facilities is unwise. It makes more sense to keep records concerning the region together.
- Making collections less accessible to local communities and scholars means that these users will often have to travel further to access records held in disparate facilities.
- There is no assurance that these records will be available to researchers, as opposed to being kept at storage-only sites.
- Most of these records are not digitized and are only available as paper records.
- These closures will result in the loss of knowledge of local NARA branch staff who have extensive experience with the collections.
- The changes are also likely to produce extensive delays for researchers in accessing information as records are transferred and rehoused.
We therefore urge you not to close these facilities that are so essential to public knowledge of, and research in, American legal history. Please let us know if we can answer any questions.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Committee on Documentary Preservation, American Society for Legal History (Peter Reich, Chair, Jody Butterworth, Ryan Greenfield)