National Park Service closes D.C.’s historic Dupont Circle Park during WorldPride

The National Park Service and U.S. Park Police on Thursday evening closed Dupont Circle Park, widely known as the heart of Washington,’s LGBTQ neighborhood, ahead of the final weekend of WorldPride, an international Pride celebration being held in the nation’s capital this year.

This year’s parade route was not set to go through Dupont Circle, but the park has traditionally hosted unofficial celebrations after Pride events. It was home to some of D.C.’s earliest Pride celebrations in the 1970s as well as major protests during both the LGBTQ rights and Civil Rights Movements.

The park service said in a letter Wednesday that the park would be closed from 6 p.m. Thursday until 6 p.m. Sunday. The letter said the U.S. Park Police had determined that the closure is necessary to “secure the park, deter potential violence, reduce the risk of destructive acts and decrease the need for extensive law enforcement presences.”

Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes D.C. Pride and is hosting this year’s WorldPride celebration, said Friday that it is “frustrated and disappointed” in the park service’s decision to close Dupont Circle during WorldPride.

“This beloved landmark is central to the community that WorldPride intends to celebrate and honor,” Capital Pride Alliance said in a statement. “It’s much more than a park, for generations it’s been a gathering place for DC’s LGBTQ+ community, hosting first amendment assemblies and memorial services for those we lost to the AIDS epidemic and following tragic events like the Pulse nightclub shooting.”

The organization added that the “sudden move” was “made overnight without consultation with the Capital Pride Alliance or other local officials,” and that no WorldPride activities were planned in Dupont Circle and thus no official events would be affected.

The park’s closure comes after weeks of back and forth between D.C. police and federal officials. D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith requested a full closure of the park in April, and on Tuesday morning, the National Parks Service issued a statement that the park would be closed through the final weekend of WorldPride festivities due to the request from Smith and U.S. Park Police, NBC Washington reported.

That same day, Smith rescinded the request after meeting with members of the community to talk about the significance of the park to the Pride celebration, according to NBC Washington, and Smith told two D.C. City Council members that the park would remain open for the weekend.

Then, in a letter Wednesday, Major Frank Hilsher of the U.S. Park Police requested that “anti-scale” fencing, which is designed to prevent people from climbing over it, be used to close the park.

Hilsher’s letter, which was included with the park service’s letter, detailed a number of incidents that occurred in the park after formal Pride events over the years, including vandalism in 2023 that resulted in $175,000 in damage to the park’s historic fountain.

He added that open-source intelligence reporting has “identified a local DJ advertising and selling tickets to an unpermitted gathering/party in Dupont Circle following World Pride events.” The event, Hilsher said, is not sanctioned by WorldPride and has not applied for a separate permit that would allow the park service to manage the event.

“This social media advertisement is stating that this is the same DJ and ‘party’ as the previous several years, which have resulted in the unsafe conditions and damages recounted above,” Hilsher said in the letter.

Organizers of WorldPride estimated that as many as 3 million people could attend, though they also issued a warning to potential transgender attendees from outside of the U.S. to come at their own risk and consider travel advisories from some European countries.

In just the first few weeks of his second administration, President Donald Trump issued several executive orders targeting trans people, including declaring that there are only two unchangeable sexes; prohibiting trans people from enlisting and serving in the military; barring trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams in federally-funded K-12 schools and colleges; and barring federal funding from going to hospitals that provide transition-related care to minors.

As a result of Trump’s executive order defining sex, federal officials have also scrubbed agency websites of any mention of transgender or intersex people. References to transgender and queer people were removed from the webpage for the Stonewall National Monument commemorating the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, widely considered a turning point in the modern gay rights movement. A web page dedicated to Frank Kameny, an LGBTQ rights pioneer, was also erased from the National Park Service website this year. The National Park Service’s webpage for Dupont Circle Park also now says that the park “has served as the anchor of a neighborhood of diplomats, government officials, war commemorations, and the LGB community for over 200 years,” removing transgender and queer from the LGBTQ acronym.

Earlier this week, the Navy confirmed to NBC News that it would rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named for the LGBTQ rights activist, Navy veteran and first openly gay man elected to public office in California.