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Fire lookout · Boundary County, Idaho

Iron Mountain Lookout

Kaniksu National Forest lookout in Boundary County, Idaho: a 40-foot pole tower with L-4 cab built in 1934 and destroyed in 1955; hike-in site.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1955 per two sites; the Forest Lookouts county list also gives 1955

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 tower40-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Boundary County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.56548, −116.20422
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-iron-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 4.2 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. 1934 Built40-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1955
  3. 1955 DestroyedBoth sites give 1955; the county list gives 1955 with no labelSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  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.

The Iron Mountain lookout stood in Boundary County, in the Kaniksu National Forest.1,2,3 Both Rex Kamstra's firelookout.com page and Idaho Fire Lookouts describe a 40-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1934.1,2

Both sites say it was destroyed in 1955.1,2 A county list on Forest Lookouts also gives 1955 for the site, with no further detail.3

Idaho Fire Lookouts gives the elevation as 6,426 feet and tags the site as hike-in.2 No source we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether the public may visit it.

At least one other Idaho lookout is also called Iron Mountain. That lookout is in Camas County and in the Sawtooth National Forest, and it is on the National Historic Lookout Register.4 That site is separate and is not covered here.

  1. Iron Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/id/ironmtn234.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Iron Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/iron-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Boundary County, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/boundary-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Iron Mountain Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/id/iron-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. 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.