The Declaration of Independence may be the National Archives’ most recognizable treasure, but its holdings also include a more everyday kind of document: the canceled check from the purchase of Alaska. Alongside treaties and presidential records, the institution preserves evidence of ordinary Americans’ lives.
Military service files and immigrants’ naturalization records are part of that collection. As the National Archives and Records Administration explains, federal records can help people establish rights and entitlements, investigate government decisions and reconstruct family histories. Their value extends well beyond their age or appearance.
Established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt, the National Archives has major holdings dating to 1775. Its collections encompass slave ship manifests, the Emancipation Proclamation, captured German records and Japanese surrender documents from World War II. Journals of polar expeditions and photographs of Dust Bowl farmers preserve other dimensions of the American experience.
One particularly striking document is the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, bearing the signature “Bonaparte.” The Archives describes it as the treaty that doubled the young republic’s territory. Its presence alongside personal records illustrates the institution’s broad responsibility: preserving both consequential government actions and the documents through which individuals encounter government.
Keeping that record requires selection. According to the agency’s overview, only about 2 to 5 percent of federal records generated in a given year are judged to have continuing value. Records are retained because they remain important to government operations, offer lasting research value or contain information useful to citizens.
The physical home for those records also took years to realize. Architect John Russell Pope designed the Washington building to harmonize with landmarks including the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial. Ground was broken in 1931, President Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone in 1933, and staff moved in during 1935.
The building reached capacity in the late 1960s, prompting moves to regional archives and other storage. A new facility at College Park, Maryland, was completed in 1993. Behind the monumental architecture lies a practical mission: keeping the nation’s documentary evidence available to the people whose history it records.
