Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho
Hoyt Mountain Lookout
St. Joe National Forest 50-foot L-4 pole tower on Hoyt Mountain: built 1934, destroyed in 1956; one known staffer, George Terrien, 1940-1943.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1956
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 tower50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 50 ft (15.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- St. Joe National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Shoshone County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.21632, −115.91520
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-hoyt-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 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
- 1934 Built50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- 1940 First staffedGeorge Terrien is the only known staffer listed, 1940 to 1943Source: idahofirelookouts.com
- 1943 Last staffedEnd of the listed staffing rangeSource: idahofirelookouts.com
- 1956 Destroyedfirelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts say destroyed; Forest Lookouts Idaho says goneSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Hoyt Mountain is in Shoshone County, Idaho, about six miles southwest of Avery.1 The lookout was a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1934.1 The St. Joe National Forest is listed as its agency.1,2
A patrol point stood two miles west on Boulder Ridge.1,3
The Idaho Fire Lookouts page lists one known staffer, George Terrien, for the years 1940 to 1943, and notes the Former Forest Fire Lookout Registry beside his name.3
Two sources give 1956 as the year the tower was destroyed.1,3 The Forest Lookouts Idaho county inventory gives the same year but says only that the tower was "gone."2
No source we read describes what remains of the tower or the patrol point today. Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as drive-up, but nothing we found says whether it is open to visitors now.3
- Hoyt Mountain Lookout, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.firelookout.com/id/hoytmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Hoyt Mountain, Forest Lookouts Idaho, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/hoyt-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Hoyt Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/hoyt-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.
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: dates, 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) 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
- 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
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Hoyt Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Hoyt Mountain Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Hoyt Mountain on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.