FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Gold Peak Lookout

Kaniksu National Forest L-4 lookout: 1920s tent camp, 1934 40-ft pole tower replaced it, destroyed 1966; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
Unknown
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.80307, −116.98311
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-gold-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 4.3 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. 1934 Replaced by a new structure40-ft pole tower with L-4 cab replaced the 1920s platform and tent campSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1966
  3. 1966 DestroyedKamstra and Kemnow both give 1966. Sources give no cause.Sources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 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.

Gold Peak is a lookout site on Kaniksu National Forest land, about three miles northwest of Upper Priest Lake in Bonner County, Idaho.1 Rex Kamstra's page lists its elevation at 4,534 feet.1

The first facility, in the 1920s, was a tent camp with a 20-foot platform.1,2,3 In 1934 a 40-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab replaced it.1,3 Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts page also lists a 40-foot platform patrol tower about three-quarters of a mile northeast, in the same 1934 entry.3

Kamstra's page and Kemnow's page both give 1966 as the year the tower was destroyed.1,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts files the lookout under drive-up.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list marks the tower as gone.4 None of the pages I checked describes what remains at the site today or whether the ground is open to visitors.

  1. Gold Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/goldpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Gold Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/gold-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Gold Peak - Forest Lookouts, Ron Kemnow, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/gold-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Gold Peak Lookout
Gold 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: 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, 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.