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Fire lookout · Boundary County, Idaho

Bethlehem Mountain Lookout

Boundary County, ID 20-foot pole tower with L-4 cab built 1937 for Kaniksu National Forest; destroyed in the 1950s; no source describes the site now.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in the 1950s; 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 labels the site hike-in

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower20-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Boundary County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.90021, −116.28798
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-bethlehem-mountain

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 4.4 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. 1937 Built20-foot pole tower with L-4 cab; both pages give 1937Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. 1950 DestroyedSource: Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com)
  3. Date unknown DestroyedDestroyed in the 1950s; both pages give only the decade, so no exact year is shownSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.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.

Bethlehem Mountain's lookout went up in 1937 on the Kaniksu National Forest in Boundary County, Idaho, eight miles southwest of Eastport.1 It was a 20-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1,2 Firelookout.com, however, places the tower on the southwest point of Tungston Mountain, a peak name that differs from the Bethlehem Mountain name used here.1

When most of the area's lookouts were built in the twenties and thirties, there was no road system like today's, and the peaks were reached by trail up from the valley floor.3

Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts both say the tower was destroyed in the 1950s.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list marks the site as gone.4

Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site hike-in.2 No source describes what, if anything, remains there today, and none says whether the site is open to visitors.1,2

  1. Bethlehem Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bethlehem.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Bethlehem Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/bethlehem-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Fire Lookouts of Boundary County, Idaho, Naturally North Idaho, https://www.naturallynorthidaho.com/2011/03/fire-lookouts-of-boundary-county-idaho.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, 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: dates, 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: 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.