FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Granite Mountain Lookout

Kaniksu National Forest L-4 lookout: 1932 cabin, 1934 40-ft pole tower with firefinder; destroyed in the 1950s; 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?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.69167, −116.93953 sources disagree
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-granite-mountain

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. 1932 EventCabin that preceded the towerSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 Built40-ft pole tower with L-4 cab. Firefinder about 1/4 mile south.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1950
  4. 1950 DestroyedSource: Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.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.

Granite Mountain is a lookout site on Kaniksu National Forest land, about four miles north of Nordman in Bonner County, Idaho.1 Rex Kamstra's firelookout.com page puts its elevation at 4,780 feet.1

A cabin came first, in 1932.1,2 In 1934 a 40-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab was built, and a firefinder stood about a quarter mile south.1,3,2 Kemnow's page calls that firefinder a patrol firefinder, and it attaches the name Kresek to each date it lists.2

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.3 The tower was destroyed in the 1950s. The sources give only the decade, not a single year.1,3,2

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 it is open to visitors.

  1. Granite Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/granitemtn234.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Granite Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Ron Kemnow, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/granite-mountain2.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Granite Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/granite-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Granite Mountain Lookout
Granite Mountain LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.

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 760 m.

    • Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com): 48.69167, −116.93953
    • FFLA: 48.69171, −116.92921
    • firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page: 48.69171, −116.92921

    The map uses the position from Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com).

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, 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: location, 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.