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Fire lookout · Boundary County, Idaho

Bussard Mountain Lookout

Kaniksu National Forest tower built in 1935 as a 30-foot pole with an L-4 cab and destroyed in 1955; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1955; one Idaho register lists it as removed.

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 tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Boundary County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.89085, −116.23220
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-bussard-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 4.1 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. 1935 Built30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1955
  3. 1955 DestroyedBoth lookout histories give 1955Sources: 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.

The Bussard Mountain lookout stood in Boundary County, about 14 miles north-northeast of Bonners Ferry, inside the Kaniksu National Forest.1,2 The tower went up in 1935: a 30-foot pole structure with an L-4 cab, at an elevation of 5,968 feet.1,3

The tower was destroyed in 1955.1,3 One Idaho register uses the word "Removed" for the tower instead of "destroyed."2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone, and one lookout guide labels the site drive-up.4,3

No source I found describes what remains at the site today, or whether the land is open to visitors.

  1. Bussard Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bussardmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Bussard Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Idaho Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/bussard-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Bussard Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/bussard-mountain-lookout/ (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.