All federal employees are required to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, but that oath takes on a different meaning for Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan.
Shogan is responsible for safeguarding the country’s founding documents and billions of other records at the National Archives. The small federal agency acts as a repository for the documents that have been at the heart of the nation for nearly 250 years, and the billions more created since. It’s all stored at dozens of complexes across the U.S., including four underground cave facilities.
How billions of records are stored
The National Archives is home to about 13.5 billion paper records. It also stores film — enough to wrap around the globe three and a half times – millions of photographs and over 700,000 artifacts, Shogan said.
Most of the National Archives’ massive collection is kept outside of Washington at dozens of facilities across the U.S. that span millions of cubic feet, including four underground cave complexes in the Midwest.Â
“Our archivists actually use bikes because it’s about a mile from one end of the facility to the other,” Shogan said of the National Archives’ civilian records center in Valmeyer, Illinois.Â
The Archives’ main attractions are in a building in Washington that was inspired by ancient Rome, and built to be a temple to history. Each year more than a million people make the trip to see the national treasures stored in the Rotunda: the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
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While the Rotunda was completed in 1937, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did not arrive until 1952. They had been in the possession of the Library of Congress, which refused to turn them over, until President Harry Truman got involved.Â
To preserve them, the documents are kept in the dark and guarded around the clock. They’re in bulletproof cases designed to remain sealed for 100 years.
A big change is coming to the Rotunda: in 2026, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment, which extended the right to vote to women, will be put on permanent display alongside the founding documents. They will be the first major additions to the Rotunda’s holdings in 72 years. Shogan decided to add them, both to honor the nation’s past and serve as a reminder that America’s next chapter is not yet written.
Deciding what makes it into the National Archives
Until 1934, federal agencies stored their own records, with varying degrees of success. When the National Archives was created, work began to restore 158 years’ worth of dusty, forgotten documents.
Only about 3% of government paperwork is deemed important enough to preserve for posterity. Documents can sit for years before being retained or, more likely, destroyed.Â
At the Washington National Records Center outside D.C., there are 20 football fields of files, stacked floor to ceiling, awaiting their fate.
America’s receipts and records
As director of Textual Records, Trevor Plante is in charge of more than two billion written documents in Washington. He likes to say the Archives keeps the nation’s receipts — and he means it. The Louisiana Purchase, signed by Napoleon Bonaparte himself, is stored at the Archives’ main building on Constitution Avenue.Â
“It was 4 cents an acre, which was a pretty good deal since we doubled the size of the United States,” Plante said.Â
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There’s also the deed of gift that came with the Statue of Liberty from France in 1884 and the check Russia cashed when the U.S. bought Alaska in 1867 for $7.2 million.
There are 1,218 Revolutionary War-era oaths, signed by officers of the Continental Army pledging allegiance to their new nation in 1778 – including future President George Washington, and his Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. President Richard Nixon’s Aug. 9, 1974 resignation letter is also in the collection.
One of Plante’s favorite documents at the National Archives is the 13th Amendment to the Constitution — the amendment that abolished slavery. An element of its appearance is unlike any other constitutional amendment.
“There’s several different handwritings for the 13th Amendment,” Plante said. “So we speculate that these clerks realized what a big deal this was at the time, and literally wanted to have a hand in history.”
After the Archives’ main building in Washington ran out of room, a state-of-the-art facility in College Park, Maryland was opened in 1994.
Deputy Archivist Jay Bosanko runs day-to-day operations from there. He invited 60 Minutes into their most restricted vault, where cameras usually aren’t allowed, to see relics of a dark chapter in world history: Hitler’s last will and testament, and Eva Braun’s diary.
“This was quite literally sort of the spoils of war. This was captured by U.S. Armed Forces. Then transferred to us at the National Archives,” Bosanko said.Â
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Some of the items inside the vault only became historically significant with age, like a letter from a young Fidel Castro to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“You never know when you’re opening a box, what you might find next,” Bosanko said.
Researchers, writers and history buffs from around the country and the world come to the National Archives to make discoveries. On a recent trip to the facility in College Park, Maryland, a group from Japan was cataloging the American occupation that followed World War II.Â
A U.S. Army unit was also there on a special mission: combing through a million old Army files looking for Black and Native American soldiers, who were once overlooked, but might now be awarded the Medal of Honor.
“The records that we hold need to be made available,” Bosanko said. “We need to bring the stories that are captured in those records alive.”
