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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Anthony Peak Lookout

St. Joe NF 20-foot pole L-4 lookout in Shoshone County, built 1936; burned in winter 1964-65 and left as ruins, with a conflicting 1967 staff entry.

Ruins: Only footings or remains are left. Burned in the winter of 1964-65 and left as ruins, per firelookout.com; the Idaho Fire Lookouts site also lists it in ruins

Visit & stay

Ruins: footings or remains only. There is no structure to climb or rent.

Access

Open to the public. On St. Joe National Forest land; the Idaho Fire Lookouts site labels the ruins drive-up

Road to the top?
Yes, you can drive up
Trail
A 1959 USGS station description of the peak says to pack up a trail about 3 miles from the end of truck travel; the sources disagree on access

Facts

Status
Ruins
Type
Cab on a tower20-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.98120, −116.19080
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-anthony-peak

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and its recorded height.

Downloads about 3.9 MB of terrain data the first time.

Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.

History

Then and now

  1. 1936 Built20-foot pole tower with L-4 cab, as dated on the Forest Lookouts site citing Kresek; firelookout.com and the Idaho site agree on 1936; a log cabin stood about a quarter mile northSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1936 and 1960
  3. 1960 StaffedRagnar Benson listed as known lookout personnelSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1965 BurnedBurned in the winter of 1964-65 per firelookout.com; the 1967 staff entry on the Idaho site does not fit this dateSource: firelookout.com
  5. 1967 StaffedSherman Rouse listed as known staff, citing Kellogg Evening NewsSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  6. TodayRuinsOnly footings or remains are left.

Old maps of this spot

USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Anthony Peak Lookout stood on a peak in Shoshone County, about 13 miles northeast of Bovill, at 4,686 feet, within St. Joe National Forest.1 The Forest Lookouts site, citing Kresek, dates the tower to 1936.2 It was a 20-foot pole structure with an L-4 cab.2 A log cabin stood about a quarter mile north of it.1

The Idaho Fire Lookouts site lists two known staff, each from a Kellogg Evening News item: Ragnar Benson in 1960 and Sherman Rouse in 1967.3 Firelookout.com lists only Benson, for 1960.1

Firelookout.com says the lookout burned in the winter of 1964 to 1965 and that ruins were left.1 The 1967 staff entry does not fit that date, and the sources do not say which is right.1,3

The Idaho site labels the remains drive-up ruins.3 A 1959 U.S. Geological Survey station description of the peak, quoted on the Forest Lookouts site, says to pack up a trail for about three miles from the end of truck travel to the top.2 The two accounts do not match, so check current access before heading out.3,2

  1. Anthony Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/anthonypeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Anthony Peak, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/anthony-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Anthony Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/anthony-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  2. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: links firelookout.com · No licence stated on the site; facts only (coordinates, elevation, built/destroyed years, design, agency). Photos mirrored with the site's stated credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) Gave us: links idahofirelookouts.com · No licence stated; facts only (coordinates, status/built/destroyed year parsed from each entry's short excerpt). Thumbnail photos mirrored with credit per the project's photo policy. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: design, height, agency, ownership, links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, visiting details, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story

More about this lookout elsewhere

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.