Chicago’s National Archives Are in Danger

On June 23, 2026, the National Archives and Records Administration informed its employees, through NARA Notice 2026-037, of a plan to close the National Archives facilities in Chicago and San Bruno, California, and relocate their holdings to as many as 12 other facilities around the country. While NARA claims that this closure will take place in the next few years, the move of records from these facilities could begin as soon as August 2026.

The Chicago facility serves Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. San Bruno serves northern and central California, Nevada, Hawaii, and the Pacific territories. Tens of millions of Americans could lose regional access to federal records, including immigration and naturalization records from these areas.

These Are Not Warehouses of Duplicate Paperwork

The vast majority of the records in Chicago and San Bruno are original paper records that exist nowhere else. Many have never been digitized, and given their volume, age, condition, and fragility, much of this material cannot realistically be expected to become available online anytime soon.

For these records, the building IS the access.

Closing a regional archives facility does not simply mean that researchers will have to visit a different building nearby. The records themselves could be dispersed among facilities hundreds or thousands of miles from the communities whose history they document.

What Is at Stake in Chicago

What is at stake in Chicago is the recorded life of the American heartland. The Chicago facility preserves approximately 140,000 cubic feet of archival material, including maritime logs, customs records, and lighthouse and life-saving service files that document commerce and catastrophe on the Great Lakes, the freshwater arteries on which the industrial Midwest was built.

It holds records of federal relations with Native nations across the Great Lakes region, including enrollment records, agency correspondence, and treaty-era documentation that tribal governments and citizens rely upon today for enrollment, land, and sovereignty matters.

It also safeguards federal court and agency records that chronicle the great labor history of the Midwest, including Pullman, Haymarket-era prosecutions, the steel and stockyard organizing drives, and the litigation through which working people secured their rights.

These are not regional curiosities. They are national history that happens to live in the Midwest, and the people of the Midwest are entitled to reach it.

Why This Matters to Genealogists

For family historians, access to these collections can mean the difference between a dead end and a discovery. The Chicago facility holds immigration, naturalization, federal court, and other records that can contain birthplaces, addresses, immigration details, spouses, witnesses, and other clues about individual people and families.

An online index may provide little more than a name and date, while the original record may contain the information that connects one generation to the next. Many records are not fully available online, so access to the original files, and to archivists who know the collections, remains an important part of genealogical research.

What You Can Do

Please contact your U.S. Representative and both of your U.S. Senators and ask them to protect continued regional access to the records now held by the National Archives at Chicago.

We encourage you to ask for three things:

1. A halt to relocation of the records until genuine public consultation has been held in the affected regions.
2. Congressional action to fund a meaningful regional archives system.
3. Full transparency about where every record group will be moved and how the public will be able to access it.

You do not need to write a long letter. A short personal message explaining that you are a constituent and why access to these records matters to you can be particularly useful. If you have used National Archives records in your own research, consider briefly describing what you found and why access to the original records was important.

Find your U.S. Representative by ZIP code:
Find Your Representative

Contact your U.S. Senators:
U.S. Senate Contact Information

Full congressional member directory and committee assignments:
Congress.gov Member Directory

You can also help by sharing this information with other genealogists, historians, researchers, and anyone else who may be concerned about continued public access to these records.

Why This Matters

The National Archives was founded on a radical and simple idea: that in a democracy, the government's records are the people's property, and the people must be able to see them.

A national archive that retreats from the nation, that consolidates the public's history into a handful of distant buildings, keeps the paper but breaks the promise.

We are not asking for anything new. We are asking that a promise made to every American be kept, in perpetuity.

Once these collections are dispersed around the country, restoring meaningful regional access may be extremely difficult. Now is the time to speak up.

Further Reading and Context

For those who would like to learn more about the planned closures, the records held in Chicago, and the broader changes taking place at the National Archives, the following articles and resources provide additional background. They include official information, independent news reporting, professional commentary, and articles that raise concerns about the political context surrounding these changes.

• National Archives at Chicago
  NARA's official page for the Chicago facility. NARA confirms that the facility will close in the next few years and provides information about its holdings and current research services.

• Archivists: Closure of Chicago National Archives Threatens Our Right to Access History
  WBEZ's reporting on the Chicago closure, including concerns from archivists and researchers about what the loss of regional access could mean.

• Chicago Area Archivists: NARA Closures and Action
  A collection of news reports, professional statements, commentary, and other information about the Chicago and San Bruno closures

• Chicago Area Archivists: Background, News, and Information on the NARA Closures
  A regularly updated collection of statements, news reports, and other information concerning the Chicago closure and the broader NARA changes.