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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Cascade Point Lookout

A 1935 pole tower with an L-4 cab in St. Joe National Forest, destroyed in 1961; no source describes what remains at the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1961; no source describes what remains at the site today

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 an L-4 cab (one county list says 20 feet)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.05742, −115.17680
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-cascade-point

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 4.0 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 L-4 tower, 1.5 miles west of Cascade Peak; a county list gives the pole as 20 feetSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1961
  3. 1961 DestroyedDestroyed per firelookout.com and the Idaho site; gone per the county list and the FFLA listSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.org
  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.

Cascade Point Lookout sat in the St. Joe National Forest, about 1.5 miles west of Cascade Peak and eight miles east of Red Ives G.S., in Shoshone County, Idaho.1

Its listed elevation is 6,084 feet.1,2

The lookout went up in 1935 as a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1,2 One county list gives the pole as 20 feet, so the height is in dispute.3

It was destroyed in 1961, according to the firelookout.com and Idaho pages.1,2 A county list also has it gone by 1961,3 and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the tower as gone.4

The Idaho site labels the location a drive-up site.2 None of the sources describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to the public.

  1. Cascade Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/cascadepoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cascade Point Lookout – Idaho Fire Lookouts, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/cascade-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Shoshone County – Forest Lookouts, idaholookouts.weebly.com, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts – Forest Fire Lookout Association, 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. 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.