What Does The Upside-Down American Flag In Yosemite National Park Really Mean?
El Capitan, one of the most beautiful places in Yosemite National Park, has been turning heads for a different reason lately: An upside-down American flag was seen hanging at the top of the rock formation in February 2025. The inverted flag wasn't placed there out of disrespect, but rather, a handful of Park Service employees hung it as a symbol of protest.
A group of frustrated Yosemite National Park staffers hoping to draw attention to the federal government's sweeping workforce cuts hung an upside-down American flag thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan on Saturday.
📸: Tracy Barbutes pic.twitter.com/yGqSIp05Mp
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) February 23, 2025
According to the United States Flag Code, flying the flag upside down is recognized "as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property." Historically, this was a way for ships at sea to indicate danger or call for help. However, in modern times, displaying an upside-down flag has been used as a form of protest. For example, in 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a University of Washington student hanging an inverted flag to protest the Kent State shooting of Vietnam protesters.
One fact you maybe didn't know about America's national parks is that they're maintained by around 20,000 federal employees, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who pitch in. As thousands of them have been abruptly terminated since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, many of those who worked in U.S. national parks and forests are concerned about how the layoffs will affect our beloved public lands, and the people who visit them.
The protest behind the inverted flag at Yosemite
People first started noticing the inverted flag on February 22, 2025, when visitors flocked to the park to check out Yosemite's natural wonder, Firefall. During this annual event — perhaps one of the world's strangest natural wonders – sunlight hits Horsetail Fall and turns the water and face of the rock a mesmerizing orange.
The government had laid off and fired at least 1,000 Park Service employees in February 2025, with thousands more losing their jobs in the U.S. Forest Service. This is just a small chunk of federal jobs the government has cut at the recommendation of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Around 30,000 workers have lost their jobs so far, while there are estimates that it could potentially grow to hundreds of thousands of job cuts.
One of the protesters to hang the flag, Gavin Carpenter, told The San Francisco Chronicle: "We're bringing attention to what's happening to the parks, which are every American's properties. It's super important we take care of them, and we're losing people here, and it's not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open."