FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Bat Point Lookout

L-6 cab on a 60-foot pole tower, built 1934 on the Nez Perce National Forest and destroyed in 1957. No source describes remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower destroyed in 1957; no source describes what remains at the site

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; a National Geodetic Survey station description dated 1946 gives trail directions from the end of truck travel

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-6 cab on a 60-foot pole towerThe design: L-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
60 ft (18.3 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.57177, −115.26095
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-bat-point

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 3.6 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. 1934 BuiltL-6 cab on a 60-foot pole tower, about 1/4 mile southeast of the highest pointSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1957
  3. 1957 DestroyedTower destroyed; no cause given in the sourcesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 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.

Bat Point sits on the Nez Perce National Forest, about 20 miles southeast of Elk City in Idaho County. The site stands at 5,984 feet.1

In 1934 a lookout with an L-6 cab went up on a 60-foot pole tower, set about a quarter mile southeast of the highest point.1,2,3

The tower was destroyed in 1957.1,2,3 A statewide lookout listing now marks it as gone.4

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.2 No source we found describes what, if anything, remains on the ground today.

A National Geodetic Survey station description from 1946, reproduced on the Forest Lookouts page, places a bronze disk stamped BAT 1945 in a boulder on a timbered ridge below the tower. Its trail directions run about four miles from the end of truck travel to a fork, then about a mile farther on the left fork to reach the lookout.3

  1. Bat Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/batpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Bat Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/bat-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Bat Point, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/bat-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho fire lookouts list, firelookout.org, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (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, 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.