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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Cottonwood Point Lookout

Gone 40-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1937 north of Priest River, Idaho; abandoned in the 1940s, with only footings and scrap metal left.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. No tower remains. Idaho Fire Lookouts says only cement footings and scraps of metal are left.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. On Kaniksu National Forest land and listed as drive-up. The level is inferred from the forest and drive-up notes; no source states an access rule.

Road to the top?
Yes, you can drive up

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a 40-foot pole towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.36884, −116.92298
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-cottonwood-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 4.3 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. 1937 Built40-foot tower with an L-4 cab. Idaho Fire Lookouts also mentions a log cabin.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1940 AbandonedSources give only the 1940s; 1940 is a placeholder for the decade, not a dated event.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 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.

Cottonwood Point Lookout stood on Cottonwood Point, about 13 miles north of Priest River in Bonner County, Idaho, on land of the Kaniksu National Forest.1,2 Its 40-foot tower was built in 1937.1,3,2 The sources describe the structure a little differently. Firelookout.com calls it a pole tower with an L-4 cab, while Idaho Fire Lookouts describes an L-4 tower and a log cabin.1,3

The lookout was abandoned in the 1940s, according to all three sites.1,3,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the tower as gone.4

Idaho Fire Lookouts reports that a logging operation passed through the area. All that is left is cement footings and some scrap metal.3 The page lists the site as drive-up.3 It sits on National Forest land, but none of these sources gives an access rule or says whether anyone uses the site now.1,3,2

Idaho also has a Cottonwood Point lookout in Custer County, the Mid-Cottonwood Point site, which the Association lists as standing. It is a different place and should not be confused with this one.4

  1. Cottonwood Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/cottonwoodpoint233.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cottonwood Point - Forest Lookouts, idaholookouts.weebly.com, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/cottonwood-point1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Cottonwood Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/north-idaho-panhandle-region/cottonwood-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Cottonwood Point Lookout
Cottonwood Point LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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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, 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
  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, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.