Which National Parks Will You Vote To Get $2 Million In Grants?

In honor of the National Park Service's centennial, The 2016 Partners in Preservation organizes a contest open to national parks across the United States. The historic sites that have the most votes will receive a part of $2 million in corporate funding. It is up to you which sites will get the money.

According to National Geographic, those with most votes will be granted up to $250,000 for the conservation or restoration of the project. The voters can choose from historic sites across the mainland United States. These include Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico. The 2016 Partners in Preservation contest is initially the one to occur on the national level. Make your choice now and vote here.

The Partners in Preservation Program is created by American Express and the National trust for Historic Preservation. They aim to increase the public's awareness of the significance of historic preservation in the United States and to conserve America's historic and cultural places.

The program has pledged $16 million in support of historic places across the U.S. They help historic places in eight cities to date. These include Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Boston, New Orleans, Saint Paul/Minneapolis, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Metro. The National Geographic also collaborated with the American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation this year.

John Hildreth, the trust's senior advisor for reservation stated that for ones to continue to mature as a society, they need to make sure that they are preserving these places that cannot be replaced. He urged to protect not only the natural heritage but also the historic and cultural parts of the United States.

So, where would they use the grants in case they are the ones chosen by the people? The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, Georgia would use the winning amount to conserve the outside of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is the home church of one of America's most important civil rights leaders. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico's San Juan National Historic Site would use the $250,000 to restore the parts of Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which is a 16th-century legacy of Spanish colonialism.