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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Benning

Also known as Benning Mountain

Kaniksu National Forest tower near Clark Fork: a 40-foot L-4 cab tower built in 1930, abandoned by 1951, now ruins; hike-in site.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1951; the sources describe ruins, not a standing tower.

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 calls the site a hike-in location with ruins.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower40-foot tower with an L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.33799, −116.08378 sources disagree
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-benning

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. 1930 Built40-foot tower with an L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1930 and 1951
  3. 1951 AbandonedAbandoned in 1951; firelookout.com lists ruins from the same yearSources: firelookout.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.

Benning Mountain's lookout was a 40-foot tower topped with an L-4 cab, built in 1930 in the Kaniksu National Forest about 13 miles north-northeast of Clark Fork, in Bonner County.1,2 It stood at the westernmost end of the summit area, about a third of a mile southwest of the high point.1

The two lookout sites that cover it differ on the summit's elevation: one gives 6,099 feet and the other 6,349 feet.1,3

The tower was abandoned in 1951.2 Firelookout.com lists ruins from the same year.1 The Idaho lookout site credits both the 1930 and 1951 dates to a source it names only as Kresek.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list marks the tower as gone.4

Today the Idaho Fire Lookouts site describes the place as a hike-in site with ruins.3 No source describes what those ruins look like now.

  1. Benning Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/benning.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Benning, FOREST LOOKOUTS (Idaho lookouts site), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/benning.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Benning Mountain, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/benning-mountain/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Where sources disagree

We show disagreements between sources instead of quietly picking one. If you know which is right, please tell us.

  • Sources disagree on the location by 1.9 km (1.2 mi).

    • Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com): 48.33799, −116.08378
    • FFLA: 48.32540, −116.10125
    • firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page: 48.32540, −116.10125

    The map uses the position from Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com).

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, 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: location, 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.