Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho
Boulder Mountain Lookout
15-foot wooden L-4 tower built 1940 near McCall; destroyed 1965, or 1966 per one list; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed; firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts date it to 1965, the Forest Lookouts list to 1966
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?
- Unknown
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in; no source describes access today
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower15-foot wooden tower with an L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1940
- Height
- 15 ft (4.6 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Payette National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Valley County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 44.88128, −115.93837
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-boulder-mountain-3
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 3.7 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
- 1940 Built15-foot wooden tower with an L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1940 and 1965
- 1965 DestroyedDestroyed; 1965 per firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts, 1966 per the Forest Lookouts listSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Boulder Mountain Lookout sat at an elevation of 8,377 feet, about 8 miles east-southeast of McCall in Valley County, on the Payette National Forest.1,2
Sources describe a 15-foot wooden tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1940.1,2,3
The tower was destroyed in 1965, according to firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts.1,2 The Forest Lookouts list gives 1966 for the same loss.3
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.2 No source describes what remains of the tower at the site today, or whether the site is open to visitors.
- Boulder Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bouldermtn307.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Boulder Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/boulder-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Boulder Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/boulder-mountain1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) Gave us: photos, 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) 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
- 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
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Boulder Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Boulder Mountain Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Boulder Mountain on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.