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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Cemetery Ridge Lookout

St. Joe NF lookout in Shoshone County: 1928 camp, 10-foot L-4 pole tower 1930, destroyed 1964; no source describes what remains at the site.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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; a patrol point is 2 miles SW on Cameron Hill

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab (1930); a camp was listed on the site in 1928The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
10 ft (3.0 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.37224, −116.04733
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-cemetery-ridge

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 3.7 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. 1928 EventListed as a camp on the siteSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com
  2. 1930 Built10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cabSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com
  3. 1936 EventDecember 1936 newspaper item: the local name Cemetery ridge was adopted on maps for the lookoutSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1936 and 1953
  5. 1953 EventJuly 14, 1953: a 14-year-old Boy Scout found on Cemetery ridge near what the Idaho State Journal called an unmanned Forest Service lookout stationSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1964 DestroyedDestroyed in 1964Sources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com
  7. 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.

Cemetery Ridge is a peak in the St. Joe National Forest, in Shoshone County, Idaho, about nine miles southwest of Wallace, at 5,591 feet.1,2,3

A camp was listed on the site in 1928, and a 10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab in 1930.1,2,3 A patrol point two miles southwest, atop Cameron Hill, is listed with the lookout.2,3

The ridge's name has a story of its own. A December 1936 Independent (Helena) item, reprinted on the Forest Lookouts page, quotes Joe B. Halm of the Forest Service engineering department. He said eleven victims of the 1910 Big Creek fire were buried at the foot of the ridge, which came to be called Cemetery ridge as a result. He also said the name was then made official on maps of the lookout atop the peak.1

In July 1953 a 14-year-old Boy Scout who had been missing from a fishing trip was found on Cemetery ridge, near what an Idaho State Journal report described as a Forest Service lookout with no one stationed in it.1

The lookout was destroyed in 1964.1,2,3

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.2 None of the sources we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.1,2,3

  1. Cemetery Ridge, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), Weebly, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/cemetery-ridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cemetery Ridge Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/cemetery-ridge-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Cemetery Ridge Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/cemeteryridge.html (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: design, height, 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, height, 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.