The reconstructed barracks, guard and water towers at the newly designated Amache National Historic Site, or the Granada Relocation Center. Photo: Stuart West//NPS
The United States officially has a new National Park. The Amache National Historic Site, in Granada, Colorado, is the newest member to join the ranks of parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.
Amache, which is also known as the Granada Relocation Center, has a pretty heavy history. As one of the 10 incarceration sites the War Relocation Authority established during World War II to detain Japanese Americans, it served as a prison of sorts for over 10,000 individuals — which was comprised mostly of American citizens — from 1942 to 1945.
It’s the seventh national park dedicated to preserving a particularly unsettling era of American history. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, as the old saying goes.
“[The] 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,” said Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland.
As with most things contingent on government, Amache’s ascent to national park status wasn’t a quick thing. On February 18, 2022, the House of Representatives approved the the Senate amendments by unanimous consent. President Biden signed the bill a month later, and a few years later, on February 15, 2024, the Amache National Historic Site officially became the 429th unit of the National Parks Service.
“Located in a remote corner of southeastern Colorado, Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, was one of 10 incarceration sites established by the War Relocation Authority during World War II to unjustly incarcerate Japanese Americans who were forcibly removed from their communities on the West Coast under the provisions of Executive Order 9066,” wrote the National Parks Service. “During its operation from 1942-1945, over 10,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, passed through Amache. At its peak population in 1943, Amache housed 7,310 incarcerates, making it the 10th largest city in Colorado at the time.”
Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado. Photo: NPS
Although it was the smallest incarceration site by population, Amache still held a huge number of people. About 15 miles west of Kansas, the site was known officially as Granada Relocation Center but incarcerates called it Amache after a woman named Amache Ochinee Prowers, who was “an outspoken Southern Cheyenne who married the county’s namesake John Prowers.”
“[Amache Ochinee Prowers] was also the daughter of Chief Ochinee, a traditional Cheyenne leader, who was murdered during the Sand Creek Massacre,” the NPS explained. “The connection between the incarceration camp and the tribe goes beyond a name; the land on which the camp was situated was once part of unceded Southern Cheyenne treaty lands.”
After the Amache camp was closed at the end of World War II in 1945, most of it was demolished. After the West Coast’s exclusion order expired in January of 1945, the Japanese who were sent there were allowed to return to their homes, but many stayed until they were forced to leave a few months later, in October of 1945. A little less than a year later, on January 27, 1946, the camp officially closed and most of the buildings were auctioned off.
Still though, the parts that remain make it one of the most intact examples of a World War II incarceration site. The foundations of the buildings that were once there and the network of roads winding through it are still partially visible, thanks mostly in part to the Amache Preservation Society, the Town of Granada, and the families of the people who were sent there.
In recent years, the site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places (that happened in 1994), and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Despite the fact that the majority of it was razed in the years after the war, in addition to the building foundations and remains of the old roads, the site also includes a historic cemetery, a monument, and various structures from the World War II era, including a barrack, recreation hall, guard tower, and water tank.
Its addition to the list of National Parks is due in part to an effort to remember some of the atrocities that occurred in order to learn from our past mistakes.
“The National Park Service (NPS) units preserving Japanese American incarceration sites,” NPS explained, “should provide places for people to learn about and reflect upon the historic events that occurred there.”
