OREM -- In the coming weekend, flowers, decorations and all manner of tokens of love and remembrance will be placed at the grave sites of close family and friends.

For many, visiting the grave site of a departed loved one is an annual, or perhaps even more frequent, observance or family tradition. But many family members live great distances from where their mother, father, son or daughter is buried, and don't have the opportunity to visit their grave on Memorial Day.

But thanks to an Orem Internet mapping business, those who can't be at the grave site of a loved one in person have a chance to visit a family member from afar at the Web site www.namesinstone.com. The site also makes it easy to see where a grave is located and how to find it.

Launched in November, Gateway Mapping Inc.'s Names In Stone gives users free access to an ever-growing number of burial records and their corresponding cemetery maps from about 80 cemeteries in Utah, and a total of 100 across the nation totaling more than 30,000 individual burial records.

The site's searchable databases, which include information uploaded to Names In Stone with authorization from individual participating cemeteries, allow an online visitor not only to see the precise location of a person's grave site but also the names on adjoining cemetery plots, said David Day, the company's president.

"Conventional cemetery Web sites provide an alphabetical listing of burials," he said. "Names in Stone shows you where someone is buried. A visitor to the site can search for a deceased person and if the name is in the database, it will take them to a map showing the grave locations and surrounding graves."

Bruce Cheney, development director with Gateway Mapping, said the site is not only a boon to family and friends seeking to find the resting place of someone, but a great research tool for family historians and genealogists.

Researchers can look up cemetery burial records and maps of grave sites online and get information that may or may not be on a physical headstone, such as birth or death dates and names of parents, without having to expend resources to travel to the actual sites.

Family historians have already solved genealogical mysteries -- such as discovering the existence of a previously unknown child who died shortly after birth, made possible by the site's mapping system that showed the infant was buried next to his parents.

"It's kind of like an automated research assistant," Cheney said.

In Utah County, eight cemeteries currently have their burial records on Names In Stone, including American Fork City Cemetery, American Fork Pioneer Cemetery, Fairfield Cemetery, Genola Town Cemetery, Highland City Cemetery, Lindon City Cemetery, Payson City Cemetery and Pleasant Grove City Cemetery.

Each week, more and more cemeteries are being added to the site, he said. The company is currently working with the city of Orem to add the Orem City Cemetery records to its databases.

Though Names In Stone gets authorization from the cemetery owner to upload the burial records to its site, the only information included -- the deceased's name, names of his father or mother, and dates of birth and death -- is data that is in the public domain.

Gateway Mapping, which has developed a cemetery mapping software called Spatial Generations used on Names In Stone, makes money when cemeteries agree to purchase the application and pay for the service of electronically mapping their cemetery. It also receives income from advertising on the site.

"If they're already using our software, there is no cost to [upload their records] to the site," Cheney said.

A service on the site also allows individuals such as researchers, historians or Boy Scouts to create a map of smaller cemeteries with 200 or fewer plots, provided they get the permission of the cemetery's owner, he said. There's also a feature on Names in Stone in cooperation with Teleflora where visitors can order flowers online that will be delivered to the grave site of a family member.

Cheney said cemeteries have generally been very receptive and excited about giving the public an online tool that saves city staff time trying to locate grave sites and answer questions.

Stephannie Cottle, administrative assistant for the American Fork City Cemetery, calls the online burial records site "wonderful."

"Finally, an online burial site that includes maps of burial locations," she said.

Cheney expects a high volume of visitor hits to Names In Stone in coming this weekend.

"We've already seen a big increase in [visitor] traffic in the last couple of days as people are starting to think about [the holiday]," he said.