Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho
Hornet Point Lookout
Pole L-4 lookout tower built in 1934 in Clearwater County, Idaho; sources list it as destroyed and describe nothing left at the site.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts report it destroyed; Forest Fire Lookout Association index lists Tower 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?
- Yes, you can drive up
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerPole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Clearwater County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.86176, −115.19877
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-hornet-point
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 4.1 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 BuiltPole L-4 tower, per firelookout.com and the Forest Service listSources: firelookout.com, fs.usda.gov
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Hornet Point Lookout stood in the Clearwater National Forest in Clearwater County, Idaho, about 10 miles north of the Kelly Creek ranger station.1 The Forest Service list places it in Section 28, Township 41 North.2 The site sits at 5,974 feet.1
The lookout was a pole L-4 tower, built in 1934.1,2 The Forest Service list draws on Ray Kresek's book, Fire Lookouts of the Northwest, and on Forest Service records.2
Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association index lists it as gone, and Idaho Fire Lookouts gives its outcome as destroyed.3,4
Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site under St. Joe - Clearwater and tags it Drive-Up.4 No source we found describes what, if anything, remains at the site now.
- Hornet Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/hornetpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Hornet Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/hornet-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
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: 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, 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
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts (USDA Forest Service) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Hornet Point on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Hornet Point Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.