Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho
Cave Point Lookout
30-foot pole L-4 lookout tower at Cave Point, Clearwater National Forest: built 1931, destroyed 1960. No source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1960. No source describes what remains at the site.
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?
- No, you have to hike
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Clearwater County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.70975, −115.53441
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-cave-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 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
- 1931 Built30-foot pole tower with L-4 cab; an L-5 cab on an 8-foot log crib about 1 mile north is also listedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- No record between 1931 and 1960
- 1960 DestroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
- 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.
Cave Point Lookout stood in Clearwater County, in the Clearwater National Forest.1,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts gives its elevation as 4,588 feet.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association places the site at 46.70975, -115.53441.2
Records give 1931 for a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1,3 The same listings also record an L-5 cab on an 8-foot log crib about a mile north.1,3,4 The Clearwater National Forest list places the site in section 24 of township 39 North.4
Sources agree that the lookout was destroyed in 1960.1,3,4 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.2
No source describes what remains at the site. Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site as hike-in, and none of the pages I read says whether visitors may go there.3
- Cave Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/cavepoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho Lookouts (by Region), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id/id-rg/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Cave Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/cave-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259184 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
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, 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: 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
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts (list compiled June 2016) (USDA Forest Service) (opens another site)
- Idaho Lookouts (by Region) (Forest Fire Lookout Association) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Cave Point on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Cave Point Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Cave Point 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.