FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Heavens Gate Lookout

Staffed two-story lookout in Idaho's Seven Devils, built 1978 to replace a 1924 cabin destroyed by fire in 1958.

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Open to the public. Reached by hiking trail; administered by the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, Nez Perce National Forest.

Can you climb it?
No
Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Hike-in access
Staffing
Staffed during fire season (as of recent years)

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Two-story buildingThe designs: R-6, Cupola house
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Height
Unknown
Elevation
8,429 ft (2,569 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.36861, −116.49472
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-heavens-gate

View from the cab

What you see from the 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.

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. 1924 BuiltOriginal log cabin with cupola built on the site.Sources: nhlr.org, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. No record between 1924 and 1958
  3. 1958 DestroyedOriginal cabin destroyed in a forest fire.Sources: nhlr.org, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com
  4. No record between 1958 and 1978
  5. 1978 Built'Built' field on NHLR detail pageSource: NHLR register entry
  6. 1978 Replaced by a new structureCurrent flat-top built, 20 years after the fire. NHLR describes a 10' stone base; FireLookout.com describes a two-story concrete base instead — sources disagree on the base material.Sources: nhlr.org, firelookout.com
  7. 1983 StaffedKris Anderson recorded as staffing the lookout.Source: idahofirelookouts.com
  8. No record between 1983 and 2009
  9. 2009 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered with the National Historic Lookout Register.Source: nhlr.org
  10. TodayStandingIt still stands, as far as our sources know.

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 4 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Heavens Gate Lookout stands at over 8,400 feet in the Seven Devils Mountains, on the Nez Perce National Forest above Hells Canyon.1 The name is a deliberate contrast: the lookout looks out over the Seven Devils peaks and Hells Canyon, so whoever named it reached for the opposite end of the moral map.1,2

The first structure here was a log cabin with a cupola, built in 1924.1,3 It burned in a 1958 forest fire, and the site then sat without a lookout for two decades.1,2 In 1978 the Forest Service replaced it with the building that stands today: a flat-topped structure with a catwalk running around the cab — the National Historic Lookout Register describes it as sitting on a 10-foot stone base, while FireLookout.com instead calls it a two-story concrete base; the sources disagree on that detail.1,2

Heavens Gate has been staffed through most recent fire seasons, and it's reached by a hike rather than a drive straight to the door.1,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts lists Kris Anderson as staffing it in 1983, one of the few names on record for the tower, though the fuller staffing history isn't well documented in the sources checked for this entry.3 It is administered as part of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area.1 The lookout joined the National Historic Lookout Register in 2009.1

Because it's an active, staffed lookout, Heavens Gate isn't set up as an overnight rental the way some decommissioned lookouts are.3,2 Visitors can still hike up and see it from outside during the season when it's staffed, but it functions first as a working fire lookout, not a vacation cabin.

  1. Heavens Gate Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/id/heavens-gate-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  2. Heavens Gate Lookout, FireLookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/heavensgate.html (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩
  3. Heaven's Gate Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/heavens-gate-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-04). ↩

Photos

Photo of Heavens Gate Lookout
Photo: National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Heavens Gate Lookout
Photo: Luke Channer, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
View from interior
View from interiorPhoto: Luke Channer, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Photo of Heavens Gate Lookout
Photo: Luke Channer, via National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved · source
Heavens Gate in 1922
Heavens Gate in 1922 (1922)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 1940
Heavens Gate in 1940 (1940)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 1978
Heavens Gate in 1978 (1978)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 1978
Heavens Gate in 1978 (1978)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 1978
Heavens Gate in 1978 (1978)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 1978
Heavens Gate in 1978 (1978)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 1988
Heavens Gate in 1988 (1988)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Ray Kresek @ Heavens Gate in 1988
Ray Kresek @ Heavens Gate in 1988 (1988)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate L.O.
Heavens Gate L.OPhoto: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Heavens Gate in 2017
Heavens Gate in 2017 (2017)Photo: the Fire Lookout Museum, U.S. Forest Service, Gary Weber, and Rex Kamstra, via firelookout.com · source
Photo of Heavens Gate Lookout
Photo: Paul Kehrer, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · source
Heaven’s Gate Lookout
Heaven’s Gate 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 year it was built.

    • NHLR: 1978
    • firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page: 1924

    Sources give different build years. Often one counts the first lookout on the site and another the structure there now.

Sources

  1. National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, register numbers, agency, ownership, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: type, status, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: what it is built of, photos, 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
  4. Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) Gave us: staffing, 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
  5. Wikidata -- US fire lookout towers (Q748998 and subclasses) Gave us: photos, links Wikidata · CC0 1.0 (Wikidata). Images keep their own Commons licence/credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  6. OpenStreetMap -- fire lookout structures Gave us: links © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0. (c) OpenStreetMap contributors. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  7. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: 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
  8. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, 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.