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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Grass Mountain

Payette NF lookout in Idaho County: tent camp in the 1920s, L-4 cab in 1934, destroyed in 1978; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1978 per firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and the Forest Lookouts list; the index marks it as gone

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
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site as a hike-in

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 cab; patrol point three miles north at 6,090 ftThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.38528, −114.94936
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-grass-mountain-2

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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 4.1 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. 1920 EventTent camp on the site in the 1920s (Forest Lookouts Idaho County list; no exact year)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 BuiltL-4 cab, with a patrol lookout three miles north at 6,090 ftSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1978
  4. 1978 DestroyedDestroyed in 1978 per all three lookout sourcesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.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.

Grass Mountain was a lookout in the Payette National Forest, in Idaho County, at 6,262 feet.1,2

The Forest Lookouts list of Idaho County lookouts describes a tent camp on the site in the 1920s, followed by an L-4 cab.3 The firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts entries both date that cab to 1934.1,2 The record also names a patrol point three miles north, at 6,090 feet.1,2 The firelookout.com entry places the lookout 12 miles east of Chamberlain G.S.1

The lookout was destroyed in 1978.1,2,3

No source we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether it is open to the public. Idaho Fire Lookouts lists it as a hike-in site, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association index marks it as gone.2,4

  1. Grass Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/grassmtn308.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Grass Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/grass-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho County (A-L), Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/idaho-county-a-l.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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.