Airway Beacons

Why airway beacons?

Why airway beacons, on a site dedicated to survey marks?

Apart from their obvious connection as objects that helped to build the current American infrastructure, airway beacons and survey marks are connected in another, more obscure way: through the National Geodetic Survey database.

In 2003 a fellow geocacher/survey mark hunter, Roger Barnes, asked if I would host a survey mark-related list on my web server space. He explained that he had pulled out all of the entries classified as airway beacons from the NGS database.

I was happy to post the lists and over the years I’ve maintained the content, most recently adding a map of beacon locations and accepting new and updated beacon information.

The airway beacons’ primary purpose was to provide a nighttime navigation system for early aviators, particularly for the U. S. Air Mail service, beginning in the 1920s. It’s true that the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey (precursor to NGS) was involved in early airway mapping. But the list of beacons drawn from the NGS database is not complete, and the beacons in the database are included primarily because they served as landmark stations. Still, to my knowledge it is the most extensive “catalog” of beacon locations, data that otherwise might have been lost to time and definitely would have been very difficult to piece together from other sources.

Roger’s lists have generated a lot of discussion among aviation enthusiasts and people who enjoy hunting the beacon towers and associated concrete arrows just like I enjoy searching for survey marks. I’m no expert on the topic but I have gathered some resources over the years, and I know several people who are extremely knowledgeable on the topic. Please contact me if you have questions or something to contribute!