FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Highline Lookout

Nez Perce NF lookout at 7,260 ft: 35-ft platform tower with a log cabin, built 1932; now gone, and no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Cabin and tower have since departed (firelookout.com); Idaho Fire Lookouts and the Idaho lookout list also mark it 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 lists the site as hike-in; no source describes the site today or whether it is open to the public

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Two-story building35-foot platform tower with a log cabin; L-5 log cabin on a log crib per firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts, two-story per Forest LookoutsThe design: L-5
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
35 ft (10.7 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.02527, −115.13373
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-highline

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 3.8 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. 1914 First staffedForest Lookouts: first staffed as a lookout pointSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1914 and 1932
  3. 1932 BuiltL-5 log cabin on a log crib with a 35-foot platform tower (firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts); Forest Lookouts gives a two-story log cabinSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

Highline Lookout stood in the Nez Perce National Forest, about 12 miles southwest of the Moose Creek Ranger Station in Idaho County, at an elevation of 7,260 feet.1,2 Forest Lookouts dates the first staffing of the spot to 1914, nearly two decades before the tower was built.3

The lookout went up in 1932 as a 35-foot platform tower topped with a log cabin.1,2,3 Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts describe an "L-5" cabin on a log crib, while Forest Lookouts calls it a two-story log cabin, so the sources do not agree on the cabin's form.1,2,3

Firelookout.com says the cabin and tower are no longer there, and Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the lookout as gone.1,2,4

No source describes the site today beyond the cabin and tower being gone. Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the spot as a hike-in, but none of the sources says whether the site is open to the public.2

  1. Highline Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/highline.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Highline Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/highline-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Highline, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/highline.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Highline Lookout
Highline LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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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: 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
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: 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, 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.