Fire lookout · Kootenai County, Idaho
Hemlock Mountain Lookout
Coeur d'Alene NF lookout near Kellogg: a 30-foot pole tower with an L-6 cab, built 1934 and destroyed 1955. No source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1955; 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
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerL-6 cab on a 30-foot pole tower, with a cabin for living quartersThe design: L-6
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Coeur d'Alene National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Kootenai County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.72006, −116.32863
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-hemlock-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 4.2 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
- 1934 Built30-foot pole tower with L-6 cab, built with a cabin for living quartersSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1934 and 1955
- 1955 DestroyedDestroyed; the sources give no causeSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Hemlock Mountain sat about 15 miles northwest of Kellogg, in Kootenai County, on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest.1,2
The lookout site is listed at 4,932 feet.1
The lookout went up in 1934 as a 30-foot pole tower with an L-6 cab.2,1 A cabin for living quarters went up alongside it.1,3
The L-6 was a pre-cut frame cab, 8 feet by 8 feet, and smaller than the L-4.4 Forest Service style notes say the cab sat on tall wooden towers.4
The tower was destroyed in 1955.2,3 The FFLA list records it as gone.5
Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as hike-in.3 I found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.
- Hemlock Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/hemlockmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Hemlock Mountain, Forest Lookouts (western US), idaholookouts.weebly.com, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/hemlock-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Hemlock Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/hemlock-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Lookout Styles, Nez Perce National Forest, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259212 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
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.
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) Gave us: 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) 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
- 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
- Lookout Styles, Nez Perce National Forest (USDA Forest Service) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Hemlock Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Hemlock Mountain Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Hemlock Mountain on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.