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Fire lookout · Kootenai County, Idaho

Echo Peak Lookout

Kootenai County lookout: L-4 cab on a pole tower built 1934; cab moved to Twin Crags in 1946; FFLA lists the tower as gone; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. FFLA list shows the tower as gone; no source describes what remains on 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?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a pole towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Kootenai County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.75484, −116.49905
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-echo-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 4.4 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. 1934 BuiltPole tower with L-4 cab. Height 40 ft per firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts; 30 ft per Forest Lookouts.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1946 MovedL-4 cab moved to Twin Crags Lookout. WillhiteWeb says a 20-foot pole tower with L-4 cab was moved.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1946 and 1963
  4. 1963 RemovedCab sold to a farmer, per WillhiteWeb (the Twin Crags tower, not the Echo Peak site).Source: willhiteweb.com
  5. 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.

Echo Peak sits in Kootenai County, Idaho, within the Coeur d'Alene National Forest.1,2,3 In 1934 a pole tower with an L-4 cab went up on the peak.1,4 The sources disagree on the tower's height: two give a 40-foot pole, while the Forest Lookouts page gives 30 feet.1,4,2

The Idaho Fire Lookouts site says it has no record yet of who staffed the tower.4

In 1946 the L-4 cab moved to Twin Crags Lookout, a separate site in the same county.1,4,2,3 One account says the whole 20-foot pole tower moved with it.5 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the Echo Peak tower as gone.3 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the Echo Peak site today.

A farmer bought the cab in 1963.5 A page about the Twin Crags tower says that in 2025 it was still standing with no cab.5 The Association's list calls the Twin Crags tower ruins, so the sources disagree about what stands there now.3

Anyone planning a visit to Echo Peak should ask the Coeur d'Alene National Forest about access first.

  1. Echo Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/echopeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Echo Peak, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/echo-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Echo Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/echo-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Latour Peak and Twin Crags Lookout, WillhiteWeb, https://willhiteweb.com/idaho_lookouts/twin_crags_lookout/latour_peak_059.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Echo Peak Lookout
Echo Peak 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: 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, staffing, 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.