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Fire lookout · Idaho

Grass Mountain Lookout

Payette National Forest lookout site in Idaho County: L-4 cab by 1934, destroyed in 1978. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1978; 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?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Listed by Idaho Fire Lookouts as a hike-in site.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Type unknownL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho
Coordinates
45.15442, −116.20202
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-grass-mountain-3

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 3.6 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, listed for the 1920s (decade only)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 BuiltL-4 cab, with a patrol point about 3 miles north at 6,090 ftSources: idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1978
  4. 1978 DestroyedSources: idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.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 sits in Idaho County, in the Payette National Forest, at 6,262 feet.1,2

A tent camp is listed on the site in the 1920s.3 By 1934 the site had an L-4 cab, with a patrol point about three miles north at 6,090 feet.1,2,3 The site lies about 12 miles east of Chamberlain Guard Station.2

The lookout was destroyed in 1978.1,2,3 The three pages agree on those dates. Today none of the sources I checked describes what remains on the mountain, or whether the ground is open to visitors. The Idaho Fire Lookouts page labels the site as hike-in.1

Another Grass Mountain, a lookout in the Kaniksu National Forest in northern Idaho, was destroyed in 1955 and is listed separately.4

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

Photos

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

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Sources

  1. Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) Gave us: name, location, status, 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
  2. 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.