What I'm proposing is something on a much larger scale than the Jones and Harrison book. My plan is to create an archive of documents chronicling the authorization, construction and maintenance of American lighthouses that for one reason or another no longer exist. This archive would include Congressional debates, hearings, authorizing legislation, architectural plans, and administrative information all of which I would post on-line. Some of the information is available on-line through sources like Thomas and American Memory at The Library of Congress or NAIL (NARA Archival Information Locator) at the National Archives. Most of the sources will need to be scanned from the records of the Lighthouse Board, Department of Treasury, U.S. Coast Guard, and U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in order to tell the complete story of a lighthouse through primary documents.

Finally, I would use special software designed to create 3-D renderings of structures in order to build 3-D models of lighthouses for viewing on the Internet. I discuss the technical aspects of this in my section on Technical Requirements. My goal is to rebuild these lost beacons and give them a place to shine.

Even after the compilation of a significant number of documents and the development of an easy to use layout, there is still the matter of getting people to come to my Web site. One possible technique to reach potential users is to contact Web masters and ask them to review my Web site as a possible link from their site. This requires a lot of Web surfing to identify not only lighthouse pages, but good sites that would compliment mine in both style and content. The sites run by the U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office and Jeremy D'Entremont's "New England Lighthouses: A Virtual Guide" are examples of good pages to associate with due to their content and the high potential of referrals. According to D'Entremont, his site receives approximately 60,000 total visits per month with about 7,000 unique visitors in the same period.

Another way to get visitors is by becoming the member of a "Web ring." A Web ring is a community of Web sites sharing a common theme or interest that are hyperlinked together. There are Web rings all over the Internet for fans of every imaginable subject from J.R.R. Tolkien to "The Little Mermaid" animated film. I found two Web rings for lighthouses: The Lighthouse Ring and The Lighthouse By The Sea SiteRing. Becoming a member of a ring requires only that a short form be filled out and that members promise to maintain the Web ring HTML fragment on their site. The second Web ring is courtesy of Bravenet.com, a company that offers extensive information on marketing Web sites, increasing traffic, and the use of search engine tricks.

A search for "lighthouse" on Google.com yields 889,000 hits. Entering "Hatteras lighthouse" into the same search engine came up with 8,960 possible sites. Even a small, lesser-known lighthouse, such as the "Jones Point Lighthouse" on the Potomac River appears on 94 sites. Although the quality and organization of these sites may vary widely, these figures do suggest a considerable interest in the subject. My proposal for a digital project seeks to tap into this broad and pre-existing audience and offer them something that is not available anywhere on the Internet. Nowhere on the Internet is there a complete set of information on the creation of lighthouses and nowhere on the Internet is there a site dedicated to lighthouses that no longer exist. The idea is to give these bygone beacons new life and provide a place on the Internet where people can visit and appreciate them once again.