About The Lighthouse Circuit

The Lighthouse Circuit is a free, source-grounded field guide to California lighthouses — 49 stations from Old Point Loma in San Diego to St. George Reef off Crescent City.

It exists because the existing lighthouse internet doesn't do this specific job: help someone choose a station, understand why it matters, verify access, and actually plan the trip.

Most lighthouse pages online are one of three things: SEO lists repeating the same "iconic" stations, travel posts optimized for affiliate clicks, or scattered preservation pages that may or may not answer the practical question in front of you. Can you tour it? Is the tower open? Is it tide-dependent? Is it worth the drive? What should you verify before leaving the house?

That is the job of this site.

What this site does

Every station gets a real entry.

When it was first lit. What kind of lens it used. Who keeps it now. Whether the tower is open, closed, restricted, relocated, or gone. What the visit is actually like. What to pair it with. What to verify before you drive.

The atlas is organized into three tiers:

Tier 1 — Essential. Stations of major historical, architectural, or experiential significance.

Tier 2 — Notable. Lighthouses worth knowing about or visiting, but secondary to the essential circuit.

Tier 3 — Curiosities. Ruins, demolished sites, relocated towers, harbor lights, lightships, and the inland Lake Tahoe lights.

Within Tier 1, twelve stations make up the Flagship 12 — the statewide California circuit from San Diego to the North Coast. If you only do one lighthouse trip in your life, start there.

How we verify

Every entry starts with official sources where possible: California State Parks, the National Park Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Bureau of Land Management, city or county agencies, and the preservation organizations that actually maintain these places.

Historic detail comes from sources like HABS/HAER, the Library of Congress, lighthouse organizations, and long-running reference sites. Secondary sources are used carefully and labeled as such.

Each entry carries source links, research confidence, and a last-verified date where available.

But lighthouse access changes constantly. Towers close. Bridges close. Roads wash out. Tours change. Tide windows matter. That's why the site keeps repeating one rule:

Verify before you drive.

Who's behind it

The Lighthouse Circuit is built by Jason and Cheryl La Barbera in Santa Cruz.

We started planning lighthouse trips up and down the California coast and kept running into the same problem: the history was scattered, the access details were inconsistent, and the road-trip planning layer didn't really exist.

So we built the field guide we wanted.

We are not preservation professionals or maritime historians. We are careful researchers, careful travelers, and people who think these stations deserve a better public reference than they usually get.

How this stays free

The Lighthouse Circuit is self-funded.

No ads.

No affiliate links.

No sponsored entries.

No tracking pixel.

No newsletter pop-up.

No paywall.

If a lighthouse organization needs support, we point visitors to that organization on the Resources page. We do not take a cut. Donations should go to the people keeping the lights, lenses, buildings, archives, and stories alive.

What this site is not

This is not a travel blog.

Not a coupon site.

Not a review platform.

Not a substitute for official access information.

The preservation organizations listed here are not sponsors or partners unless explicitly stated. The Lighthouse Circuit has no formal relationship with the Coast Guard, National Park Service, California State Parks, or any other agency.

Any mistake on this site is ours.

What's next

California is V1.

The structure can expand: Oregon, Washington, the Great Lakes, New England, and eventually the full U.S. lighthouse map. Same schema. Same editorial standard. Same verification posture.

For now, the work is California: better entries, better images, better visit notes, and a field guide that keeps improving lighthouse by lighthouse.

Corrections, additions, and inquiries

Spot an error? Know a closure changed? Work with a lighthouse organization and see something we should fix?

Email hello@lighthousecircuit.com with the lighthouse name and the correction.

If you're with a preservation organization, we especially want to hear from you. We would rather fix a detail before it causes a bad trip.

If you're a writer, researcher, photographer, or developer working on something adjacent, same address.