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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Jay Point Lookout

Clearwater National Forest lookout: 1929 log cabin and crow's nest, 41-foot tower with L-4 cab from 1955, burned in the 2015 Jay Point Fire.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned in the 2015 Jay Point Fire; no source describes what remains at the site today.

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
Listed as a hike-in lookout before it burned in 2015

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a 41-foot treated timber towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
41 ft (12.5 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.49829, −114.74669
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-jay-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 3.7 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. 1929 BuiltLog cabin with a crow's nest; a 1928 newspaper item quoted by Forest Lookouts may refer to it but does not name the siteSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1929 and 1955
  3. 1955 Built41-foot treated timber tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1955 and 1972
  5. 1972 StaffedStaff listed for 1972 on Idaho Fire Lookouts; no further staffing history foundSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  6. 1976 StaffedStaff listed for 1976 on Idaho Fire LookoutsSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  7. No record between 1976 and 2015
  8. 2015 BurnedLost to the Jay Point Fire; retardant drops could not save itSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  9. 2015 FireJay Point Fire, lightning-caused ignition on August 17, 2015; 3,946 acres NFS and 502 acres privateSource: forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu
  10. 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.

Jay Point Lookout began as a log cabin with a crow's nest, which two lookout-history sites date to 1929.1,2 A 41-foot treated timber tower with an L-4 cab was built in 1955.1,3

The sources disagree on the start date. Forest Lookouts quotes a newspaper report dated September 15, 1928, which lists "Jay peak" among new structures on the Lolo forest.3 We could not confirm that the report means this site, so we follow the 1929 date from the other two pages.1,2

The Idaho Fire Lookouts page lists known staff for 1972 and 1976, and asks readers to add what they know.2

The Jay Point Fire was a lightning-caused ignition on August 17, 2015, in the upper reaches of the Lochsa subbasin, south of the Lochsa River near Powell, Idaho.4 It burned 3,946 acres of national forest land and 502 acres of private timber land.4

The lookout burned in that fire.1,2,3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's 2015 chapter report says retardant drops could not save it, and that it had been used for several decades.5

Today, no source we read describes what, if anything, is left at the site. The Association's Idaho list still marks the tower as gone.6 Before the fire, the Idaho Fire Lookouts page listed it as a hike-in site.2 We found nothing on whether the ground is open to visitors now, so ask the Clearwater National Forest before going.

  1. Jay Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/jaypoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Jay Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/jay-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Jay Point, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/jay-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Jay Point Fire Burned Area Report (BAER 2500-8), USDA Forest Service, https://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/BAERTOOLS/baer-db/2500-8/2500-8_Jay%20Point_Clearwater.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Northern Idaho/Montana Chapter Annual Report 2015, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/cr-nidmt-2015.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Lookouts in Idaho, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Jay Point Lookout
Jay Point LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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

  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: 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
  4. Forest Fire Lookout Association chapter reports Gave us: dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association, chapter and restoration-grant reports (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts only (dates, names, the kind of work done). Every note is our own wording and every event links to the FFLA report it comes from. Positions are copied from the NHLR, FFLOS and FFLA records. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. 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
  6. 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.