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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Hill 36 Lookout

St. Joe National Forest lookout in Shoshone County: a 1930s crow's nest, a 1934 pole tower with an L-4 cab, destroyed in 1958.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1958; no source says what, if anything, 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
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower10-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.29190, −116.01180
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-hill-36

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 4.0 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. 1930 EventCrow's nest in the 1930s (decade only)Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1934 Built10-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1958
  4. 1958 DestroyedDestroyed 1958Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.org
  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.

Hill 36 stood in the St. Joe National Forest, in Shoshone County, about 10 miles west-northwest of Avery, at an elevation of 4,715 feet.1

The sources record a crow's nest here in the 1930s, without a more exact date.1,2 In 1934 the site got a 10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1,2 The patrol point sat on Ally Point, two miles to the southeast.1

The tower was destroyed in 1958, and both site pages agree on that year and on the 1934 tower.1,2 The association's statewide list marks the site as gone.3

We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.1,2,3 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page calls it a hike-in, and it does not say whether the ground is open to visitors.2

  1. Hill 36 Fire Lookout Tower, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.firelookout.com/id/hill36.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Hill 36 Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/hill-36-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (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. 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.