The first national assessment of its kind reveals an urgent and largely unplanned-for threat to irreplaceable cultural heritage. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) have completed the first national-scale assessment of wildfire risk to American cultural heritage. Of the 100,117 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, more than half face measurable wildfire exposure. “These places anchor community identity, collective memory, and national heritage,” says corresponding author Caitlin Fong, a researcher at NCEAS. Nationally significant sites face disproportionately high wildfire exposure relative to state and locally significant ones, meaning America’s most important historic places are among its most vulnerable.