Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho
Bussel Peak Lookout
30-foot pole L-4 tower on the St. Joe NF, built 1938 and destroyed 1958; a 2024 visit found footings and remains, and no source gives public-access rules.
- Ruins
- Access unknown
- Verified
Ruins: Only footings or remains are left. The tower was destroyed in 1958; a 2024 visit found footings and remnants on site. FFLA lists the tower as Gone.
Visit & stay
Ruins: footings or remains only. There is no structure 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
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1938
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- St. Joe National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Shoshone County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.15195, −116.13065
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-bussel-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 its recorded height.
Downloads about 3.8 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
- 1938 Built30-foot pole L-4 tower; footings in a 2024 visit carry a 1939 dateSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- No record between 1938 and 1958
- 1958 DestroyedDestroyed; no cause givenSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- No record between 1958 and 2024
- 2024 Condition assessmentIdaho Fire Lookouts site visit, post dated October 29, 2024; footings, wood stove remnants, wire and two benchmarks foundSource: idahofirelookouts.com
- TodayRuinsOnly footings or remains are 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.
Bussel Peak's lookout was a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1938 on the St. Joe National Forest, about 23 miles southeast of St. Maries in Shoshone County.1,2 The site sits at 4,473 feet.1
A post by Idaho Fire Lookouts, dated October 29, 2024, describes what the writers found there.2 They report the year 1939 written in the cement of the footings, even though the lookout is recorded as built in 1938.2 They also found two names written in the cement of another footing.2 The writers are confident the two men were part of a Civilian Conservation Corps crew in the St. Joe National Forest in 1939, but they could not identify them.2
Idaho Fire Lookouts has no documented staffing history for Bussel Peak.2
Both sources say the tower was destroyed in 1958. Neither gives a cause.1,2
On the visit described in that post, the writers found footings, remnants of a wood stove, a lot of wire and two benchmarks. The writers say more writing in the cement may once have existed in other spots, but time and weather have worn it to illegibility.2
The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.3 Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site hike-in and destroyed.2 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page does not say whether the land is open to the public.2
- Bussel Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/busselpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Bussel Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/bussel-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
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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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Bussel Peak on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Bussel Peak Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.