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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Gold Hill Lookout

Shoshone County lookout built in 1938 as a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab; its patrol point sat one mile east, atop Boulder Creek Ridge; abandoned in 1948 and listed as gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned 1948; no source describes what remains at the site

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 labels the site drive-up; no source says whether the ground is open to the public

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1938
Height
50 ft (15.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.43280, −115.83290 sources disagree
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-gold-hill

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 3.9 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. 1938 Built50-foot pole tower with L-4 cab; patrol point one mile east atop Boulder Creek RidgeSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1948 AbandonedAbandoned; listed as goneSources: 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.

The Gold Hill lookout in Shoshone County went up in 1938 as a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest.1,2,3,4 The site is listed at 6,284 feet, and its patrol point sat one mile east, atop Boulder Creek Ridge.2,1

The tower was abandoned in 1948. Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts both list it as gone, and the Forest Lookouts county list gives the same two dates.1,2,3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho index also marks it as gone.4

No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today. Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site drive-up, but no source says whether the ground is open to the public.2

  1. Gold Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/goldhill269.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Gold Hill Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/gold-hill-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Shoshone County - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Where sources disagree

We show disagreements between sources instead of quietly picking one. If you know which is right, please tell us.

  • Sources disagree on the location by 630 m.

    • FFLA: 47.43280, −115.83290
    • Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com): 47.43076, −115.82516

    The map uses the position from FFLA.

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: 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. 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

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