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Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho

Horse Mountain

Valley County, ID tower in the Payette NF: 1934 L-4 cab on a 10-foot base, destroyed 1978; sources differ on pole vs log crib; 2012 staff entries cannot fit and are left out.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1978 per all three Valley County sources; 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?
Unknown
Trail
Labelled hike-in by Idaho Fire Lookouts

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a 10-foot pole tower (firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts) or 10-foot log crib (Forest Lookouts)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
10 ft (3.0 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Valley County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.12982, −114.88080
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-horse-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 3.9 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. 1934 Built10-foot pole (or log crib) tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1956
  3. 1956 StaffedIdaho Fire Lookouts lists Mr. and Mrs. Krause, newlyweds, as known staff for 1956Source: idahofirelookouts.com
  4. No record between 1956 and 1978
  5. 1978 DestroyedDestroyed in 1978Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 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.

The Horse Mountain lookout stood in the Payette National Forest, in Valley County, Idaho, 22 miles east of Big Creek G.S.1,2

Sources date its construction to 1934.1,3,2 Most describe a 10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1,3 Forest Lookouts describes a 10-foot log crib with an L-4 cab instead.2

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists Mr. and Mrs. Krause, newlyweds, as staff for 1956.3 The same page also lists two staff entries dated 2012. That is more than three decades after the tower was destroyed, so those entries cannot belong to this lookout, and we have left them out.3

The tower was destroyed in 1978.1,3,2

None of the sources we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether the public may visit it.1,3,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site a hike-in.3

Do not confuse this tower with the other Horse Mountain Lookout, in Adams County, Idaho.4 The National Historic Lookout Register lists that one as US 1434, built in 1935 with a 30-foot open timber tower.4

  1. Horse Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, http://firelookout.com/id/horsemtn308a.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Horse Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/horse-mountain1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Horse Mountain - Idaho Fire Lookouts, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/horse-mountain/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Horse Mountain Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://www.nhlr.org/lookouts/us/id/horse-mountain-lookout/ (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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) 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
  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.