Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho
Cold Spring Lookout
Log cabin from 1931 and a 40-foot L-4 tower from 1939; the tower was gone by 1953, and the 1931 cabin remains as a rental.
- Gone
- Restricted access
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The 1939 tower is gone; the 1931 log cabin remains and is on the Recreational Rental Program.
Visit & stay
Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.
Access
Restricted access
Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. The cabin is on the Recreational Rental Program, according to Idaho Fire Lookouts.
- Road to the top?
- No, you have to hike
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as a hike-in rental.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerL-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- 40 ft (12.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Clearwater County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.78612, −115.30361
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-cold-spring
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 BuiltLog cabin. Firelookout.com says it is still there.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- 1939 Built40-foot tower with an L-4 cab.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- 1953 AbandonedFirelookout.com: lookout abandoned 1953; tower gone.Source: firelookout.com
- 1953 RemovedIdaho Fire Lookouts: tower removed 1953.Source: idahofirelookouts.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.
A log cabin went up at Cold Spring in 1931.1,2 In 1939 a 40-foot tower with an L-4 cab is listed for the site.1,2 The site lies in the Clearwater National Forest, about five miles north-northwest of the Kelly Creek Ranger Station, at 6,731 feet.1
Both sites date the end of the tower to 1953.1,2 Firelookout.com says the lookout was abandoned that year and the tower is gone,1 while Idaho Fire Lookouts says the tower was removed.2
According to firelookout.com, the 1931 cabin is still there.1 Idaho Fire Lookouts places the cabin in the Recreational Rental Program and tags the site as a hike-in rental.2 Beyond the cabin, no source we checked describes what remains at the site today.
- Cold Spring Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/coldspring268.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Cold Spring Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/cold-spring-lookout/ (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: 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, access, 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)
- Cold Spring on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Cold Spring Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Cold Spring 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.