FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Incline Ridge Lookout

Shoshone County, ID ground lookout on the St. Joe National Forest, 9 miles east of Fernwood; camp 1933, L-4 cab 1934, 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

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
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as drive-up, although the lookout was destroyed in 1957

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
Unknown
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.09711, −116.20800
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-incline-ridge

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. 1933 EventCamp listed at the siteSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 EventL-4 cab listedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1957
  4. 1957 DestroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  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.

Incline Ridge lies in Shoshone County, Idaho, about nine miles east of Fernwood, on the St. Joe National Forest.1 Its elevation is 4,900 feet.1 The listings show a camp at the site in 1933 and an L-4 cab in 1934.1,2,3 The lookout was destroyed in 1957.1,2,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as drive-up, although the lookout was destroyed in 1957.2 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.

  1. Incline Ridge Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/inclineridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Incline Ridge Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/incline-ridge-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Incline Ridge, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/incline-ridge.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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: what it is built of, design, 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, 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.