Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho
Clarkia Peak Lookout
30-foot L-4 pole tower on the St. Joe National Forest, one mile west of Clarkia, Idaho; built 1936, destroyed 1962; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1962 according to all three lookout listings; no source describes 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
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts classifies the site as drive-up
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1936
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- St. Joe National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Shoshone County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.01192, −116.27124
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-clarkia-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 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
- 1936 Built30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1936 and 1962
- 1962 DestroyedTower and cab destroyed; the listings give no causeSources: 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.
Clarkia Peak was a 30-foot pole lookout tower with an L-4 cab on the St. Joe National Forest, one mile west of Clarkia in Shoshone County, Idaho.1,2 The site is listed at 3,500 feet.1
The tower was built in 1936 and destroyed in 1962, according to all three lookout listings we read.1,3,2
A photo on the Idaho Fire Lookouts page is credited to the Fire Lookout Museum.3
Idaho Fire Lookouts classifies the site as drive-up.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.4
The drive-up label is in the listing, but no source says whether a road still reaches the site. We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.
- Clarkia Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/clarkiapeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Shoshone County, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Clarkia Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/clarkia-peak-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
- 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
- Shoshone County (Forest Lookouts) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Clarkia Peak on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Clarkia 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.