Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho
Caribou Hill Lookout
Bonner County 40-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, built 1933 near Upper Priest Lake and destroyed in 1971; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1971 according to all three lookout sites; no source describes what remains
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 files the site as hike-in
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower40-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1933
- Height
- 40 ft (12.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Pend Oreille TPA
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Bonner County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 48.81404, −116.83917
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-caribou-hill
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 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
- 1933 Built40-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1933 and 1971
- 1971 DestroyedSources: 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.
Caribou Hill is in Bonner County, Idaho, and Upper Priest Lake lies about two miles to its southwest.1 Both firelookout.com and Forest Lookouts date the tower to 1933 and list it at 40 feet tall with an L-4 cab.1,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts gives the elevation as 4,592 feet and places the tower in the Pend Oreille TPA.3
Idaho Fire Lookouts has no staffing history on record for this site.3
The tower was destroyed in 1971.1,2 Firelookout.com marks its span as 1933 to 1971.1 Forest Lookouts attributes its dates to Kresek.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a gone tower.4
No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can visit it. Idaho Fire Lookouts files the tower as a hike-in site that was destroyed.3
- Caribou Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/caribouhill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Caribou Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/caribou-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Caribou Hill Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/caribou-hill-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (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: dates, 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, 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)
- Caribou Hill on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Caribou Hill Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Caribou Hill 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.