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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Blackjack Peak Lookout

Shoshone County tower on the St. Joe National Forest: an L-4 tower went up in 1934, was abandoned in the 1940s and is gone. No source describes the summit today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The tower is gone; no source describes what, if anything, remains on the summit.

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?
Yes, you can drive up

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.21165, −115.42240
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-blackjack-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 4.2 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-4 tower atop the southeast point of the peakSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1940 AbandonedSources give only the 1940s; 1940 is a placeholder for that decadeSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 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.

Blackjack Peak rises in Shoshone County, Idaho, 18 miles east of Avery, on the St. Joe National Forest.1 The peak's elevation is listed as 6,015 feet.1,2

A tower with an L-4 cab went up in 1934, on the peak's southeast point.1,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts gives the same year and the same L-4 design.2

Idaho Fire Lookouts says it has no documented staffing history for the tower, and none of the three sources names a lookout.1,2,3

The tower was abandoned in the 1940s. The sources give no more exact date.1,2,3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the tower as gone.4

Today, none of the sources describes what, if anything, remains on the summit. Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site under "Drive-Up," but it does not say whether the public may visit the peak now. Check with the St. Joe National Forest before you go.2

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