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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Hot Point Lookout

Idaho County lookout: 30-foot tower with L-4 cab, built 1933 in Nez Perce NF and destroyed 1957; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1957; 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
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.10152, −115.60000
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-hot-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 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

  1. 1933 Built30-foot tower with L-4 cab, about 2.5 miles west of Fenn Ranger StationSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. No record between 1933 and 1957
  3. 1957 DestroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  4. 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.

Hot Point Lookout stood in Idaho County, about 18 miles east-southeast of Kooskia, on Nez Perce National Forest land.1,2 It sat about two and a half miles west of Fenn Ranger Station, at an elevation of about 3,900 feet.1,3 The Forest Service list places it in Section 20, Township 32 North, Range 7 East.2

Its tower went up in 1933.1,3,2,4 Sources give the tower a height of 30 feet and an L-4 type cab.1,3,2,4 The Forest Lookouts list for Idaho County gives the same 1933 start and dates the destruction to 1957.4 The lookout was destroyed in 1957, a date that all four sources give.1,3,2,4

Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site under its Selway region and lists it as hike-in.3 Today, no source we read describes what remains at the site, or whether visitors may go there.

  1. Hot Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/hotpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Nez Perce National Forest Lookouts, US Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259204 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Hot Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/hot-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho County (A-L), Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/idaho-county-a-l.html (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, 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.