This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Off the coast of North Carolina, there's a thin stretch of islands called the Outer Banks.

Picture a narrow ribbon of sand that runs along the coast for 200 miles.

These islands are three miles across at their widest and only 200 yards at their narrowest. And there's one part of the outer banks that used to be especially treacherous

for ships. It's called Cape Hatteras. That's reporter Gordon Kattuck of a

podcast called Cited.

The Cape is known for choppy seas and strong ocean currents.

Since the 16th century, these waves have caused a lot of shipwrecks, over a thousand according to the National Park

Service.

The areas become known as the graveyard of the Atlantic.

So many sailors were dying that in the late 1700s Congress authorized the construction of a giant lighthouse.

It would illuminate the dangerous passage and make the outer banks less deadly.

The lighthouse went up in a small town called Buxton, North Carolina, right near Cape Hatteras.

And the people of Buxton, they love this Lighthouse.

Generations of families there have helped maintain it.

You know, it's what your grandfather did.

It's what your great-grandfather did.

This is Danny Couch.

He's descended from English pirates,

and his family goes back nine generations in North Carolina.

Today Danny leads tours of the Outer Banks. Gordon went on one of those tours

last summer.

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