Statue of Liberty (Independence Day)

The Statue of Liberty is amongst the most recognizable symbols of the values that represent our American ideals. Liberty Island, home of the statue, was utilized by the Lenape people and their ancestors for at least the last 1500 years. Following European colonization, the island has been held privately and publicly, and was used for different purposes as the needs of the people who interacted with it changed. It has served as a military encampment and fort, it has been covered almost completely in housing for people to support those operations, and, for a brief period in the 1730s, it even operated as a quarantine station for the sick. Ahead of the Revolutionary War, it was burned to punish Tory sympathizers residing there. In the lead up to the War of 1812, construction began on an eleven-pointed star-shaped fort built to defend New York Harbor from a British naval threat that never came.

Fort Wood was completed in 1814 and served again as a quarantine station until the Civil War when it was briefly used as a prison. In 1877, Liberty Enlightening the World, or, as we know her, The Statue of Liberty, was presented to the United States as a gift from France. Fort Wood was selected to be the location where the statue would be erected, with the fort itself serving as her base. Until 1937, the statue and the military shared the island until it was transferred to U.S. Department of the Interior  control, and military operations ceased. Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty are amongst the greatest symbols of what it means to be an American, and evidence of thousands of years of uses, identities, and motivations are mixed into the soil Lady Liberty stands upon. Just as time and humanity have shaped what the landscape of the island has become at different points in history, time and humanity will continue to shape and reshape wider American landscapes, identities, and ideals. Justice, inclusivity, and opportunities for all are ideals we strive for on this Independence Day and those to come.