diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 1fbded71b..6ec1f02fb 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -419,7 +419,8 @@ endif()
 # build the lib itself
 if(BUILD_LIBRARY)
     add_subdirectory(library)
-    install(FILES LICENSE.rst docs/changelog.txt DESTINATION ${DFHACK_USERDOC_DESTINATION})
+    install(FILES LICENSE.rst DESTINATION ${DFHACK_USERDOC_DESTINATION})
+    install(FILES docs/changelog-placeholder.txt DESTINATION ${DFHACK_USERDOC_DESTINATION} RENAME changelog.txt)
 endif()
 
 file(WRITE "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/dfhack_setarch.txt" ${DFHACK_SETARCH})
diff --git a/docs/changelog-placeholder.txt b/docs/changelog-placeholder.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..86ffbcaeb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/changelog-placeholder.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+DFHack's changelog is no longer stored at this location.
+
+- For a local copy, see hack/docs/docs/NEWS.html
+  (this requires offline docs to be installed)
+- For an online copy, see https://dfhack.readthedocs.org/en/stable/docs/NEWS.html
+
+
+---
+
+Note to maintainers: this file is installed to hack/changelog.txt - for details,
+see https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack/issues/1775