The Sights and Sites of America

After 10 years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Scenic Highway of Legends in Colorado, I attended the National Scenic Byways Conference in Denver in late August, 2009. It was an inspiring 3-day event filled with great informative workshops and round-tables. But I particularly enjoyed the opportunities to meet and network with folks from all walks of life who were there to participate in the program, sharing what they knew and learning more. And it wasn't just people from individual byways, there were representatives from the Federal Highway Administration, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, National Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There were also a number of people who were individual state coordinators for the National Scenic Byway program. The majority of the event facilitators were from the National Scenic Byways Office in Duluth, Minnesota.

In the afterglow of that conference, I decided to move forward with the construction of this web site. I made the decision to move forward as a private (but engaged) citizen. As a private citizen there are things I can do that government-funded and 501(c)(3) organizations can't do. As a private citizen I also don't have any questions in regards to my mission and the "purview" of my efforts. I am also not restricted by certain elements in the federal legislation and certain requirements that the various organizations are required to meet, as long as I do meet the standard obligations incumbent on any publisher, whether in print or on the web. In the course of building this site, I am including links to the various national, state and local web sites which contain (perhaps) more data about the individual byways, national parks, national monuments, national preserves, national historic sites, national seashores and national wildlife refuges. In this way I feel I am doing something to help support them and to bring them into more prominence in regards to search engine-generated traffic and their abilities to get out in front of the general public. It was while I was in the planning stages of this project that I decided to expand the focus and include more national and state sights and sites, because there doesn't seem to be anywhere on the web that goes into all of it in a "one-stop-shop" fashion. Writing about just the byways and not covering some of the other things that those byways access seemed like I was only doing half the job, and presenting my visitors with less than half the picture.

Therefore, the efforts I have put in to build this site spring from the amount of "free" time I have on my hands and my abilities to do research and compile pertinent data for the task at hand. This entire project is financed through private means and through the use of advertising. One of the fundamentals of the National Scenic Byway program, as originally envisioned, was the stimulation and support of local businesses along the many beautiful byways in America. However, because federal and state funding and public donations to the various 501(c)(3) organizations severely limit the use of paid advertising on the web sites and other publications, local advertisers along those routes are somewhat "left out in the cold." So while my efforts to bring together disparate sources of information about all the various byways was the major stimulus for putting together this web site, I also hope to give local advertisers a chance to display their ads here through various of the Internet advertising mechanisms available. I am also in a position to "direct sell" ad space to those who may wish to contribute more directly to the support and future growth of this site. A major part of the "appeal" of this to local advertisers is based partly on my past experience in being able to publish something like this site and generate large amounts of public traffic.

Here's to hoping I am successful with this endeavor: Cheers! ...and I'll see you out there, somewhere among the Sights and Sites of America.