FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho

Artillary Dome Lookout

Valley County, Idaho ground lookout in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness: camp 1916, cabin 1934, destroyed 1968 or 1969; no source describes the site now.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1968 or 1969; no source describes what remains

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in; the access road is a rugged 4WD route

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 lookout house, ground cabinThe design: L-4
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Boise National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Valley County, Idaho
Coordinates
44.67434, −115.21576
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-artillary-dome

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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 3.6 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. 1916 EventListed as a camp at the siteSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1916 and 1934
  3. 1934 BuiltGround cabinSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1934 and 1968
  5. 1968 DestroyedForest Lookouts: L-4 lookout house no longer needed and destroyedSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1969 Destroyedfirelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts give 1969Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  7. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is 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.

Artillary Dome is in Valley County, Idaho, about 21 miles east of Warm Lake.1 At 9,318 feet, it sits in the Boise National Forest.1,2

Listings show a camp on the site in 1916 and a ground cabin in 1934.1,3

The Forest Lookouts site describes an L-4 lookout house within the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. It dates the house's destruction to 1968, when it had become redundant.3 The other two listings give 1969 instead.1,2 The records differ by one year.

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.2 A reader's comment on that page says the commenter has a 1998 photo of the burned remains of the lookout.2 That comment is unverified. No source we read describes what stands on the site now.

A climbing guide describes Artillery Dome Road, FS-477E, as a rough four-wheel-drive route running deep into the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. It also says the road crosses large stretches of burned forest, and that the Forest Service does not regularly keep it up.4 We found no source that says whether visitors may go to the site itself.

  1. Artillary Dome Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/artillarydome.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Artillary Dome Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/artillary-dome-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Artillary Dome, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/artillary-dome.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Artillery Dome Road/FS-477E, IDAHO: A Climbing Guide, https://www.idahoaclimbingguide.com/artillery-dome-road-fs-477e/ (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: what it is built of, design, 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, status, agency, 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.