FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Griffith Peak Lookout

Coeur d'Alene NF lookout on Griffith Peak, Shoshone County, ID: a 30-foot L-4 tower dated 1934, destroyed 1953; a 1926 fire had burned an earlier lookout there.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed 1953 per Firelookout.com and Forest Lookouts; no source describes what remains

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. Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as drive-up; no source says whether it is open to visitors today

Road to the top?
Yes, you can drive up
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as drive-up; no trail is described

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.91050, −116.27423
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-griffith-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 4.2 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. 1926 BurnedIndependence Creek fire burned out the Griffith Peak lookout and its telephone line (July 1926 newspaper item quoted on Forest Lookouts)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 Built30-foot pole tower with L-4 cab; may have replaced the lookout that burned in 1926, which no source describesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1945 StaffedLeonine Garnett, 18, reported on duty on Griffith Peak (October 7, 1945 newspaper item)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1953 DestroyedDestroyedSources: 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.

Griffith Peak lies nine miles south-southeast of Lakeview, in the Coeur d'Alene National Forest.1 Sources disagree on the elevation. Idaho Fire Lookouts gives 4,589 feet, while a 1945 newspaper item quoted by Forest Lookouts says 5,800 feet.2,3

A 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab is recorded for 1934.1,2,3 A July 1926 newspaper item says a fire from Independence Creek burned out the Griffith Peak lookout and its telephone line, so the peak had a lookout in 1926, eight years before the tower recorded for 1934.3

In October 1945 a newspaper item named Leonine Garnett, 18, as on duty on Griffith Peak.3

The lookout was destroyed in 1953, according to Firelookout.com and Forest Lookouts.1,3

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as drive-up.2 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.1,2,3

  1. Griffith Peak Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/griffithpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Griffith Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/griffith-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Griffith Peak, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/griffith-peak.html (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. Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) Gave us: dates, 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, access, staffing, 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.