An interactive map of US lighthouses and navigational aids
This is an interactive map of US navigational aids and lighthouses, which indicates their location, color, characteristic and any remarks the Coast Guard has attached. I was sick at home with the flu this weekend, and went on a bit of a Wikipedia deep dive about active American lighthouses. Searching around a bit, it was very hard to find a single source or interactive map of active beacons, and a description of what the "characteristic" meant. The Coast Guard maintains a list of active lights though, that they publish annually…
In plain words
An interactive map displaying active US lighthouses and navigational aids maintained by the Coast Guard. The tool shows each beacon's location, color, characteristic, and official remarks, with animated visualizations explaining what each light's characteristic means. Created to address the difficulty of finding a comprehensive source for this information, it pulls data from the Coast Guard's annual light list publication. This is intended for reference and exploration rather than actual navigation.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
This is an interactive map of US navigational aids and lighthouses, which indicates their location, color, characteristic and any remarks the Coast Guard has attached. I was sick at home with the flu this weekend, and went on a bit of a Wikipedia deep dive about active American lighthouses. Searching around a bit, it was very hard to find a single source or interactive map of active beacons, and a description of what the "characteristic" meant. The Coast Guard maintains a list of active lights though, that they publish annually (https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/light-list-annual-publication). With some help from Claude Code, it wasn't hard to extract the lat/long and put together a small webapp that shows a map of these light stations and illustrates their characteristic with an animated visualization.. Of course, this shouldn't be used as a navigational aid, merely for informational purposes! Though having lived in Seattle and San Francisco I thought it was quite interesting.
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