Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho
Jerry Johnson Lookout
Clearwater National Forest lookout in Idaho County: 40-ft pole L-4 tower built 1934, destroyed 1972. Sources differ on distance from Powell and tower height.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1972; 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?
- Yes, you can drive up
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower40-foot pole L-4 tower (1934)The design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 40 ft (12.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Idaho County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.49323, −114.93270
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-jerry-johnson
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 3.8 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 BuiltForest Service lookout on Jerry Johnson point; materials ordered in spring and packed in May; 40-foot pole L-4 towerSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1934 and 1972
- 1972 DestroyedTower destroyed; sources give no causeSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
- 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.
The Jerry Johnson lookout stood in Idaho County, on the Clearwater National Forest.1 The Forest Service list and firelookout.com place the site about 11 miles west of the Powell ranger station.1,2 A May 1934 Missoulian item, quoted on Forest Lookouts, instead puts it 15 1/2 miles downstream on the Lochsa from Powell, so the two accounts disagree on distance.3
In April 1934 the Missoulian reported that materials for ten new lookout towers had been ordered, one of them for a site in the Powell district called Jerry Johnson.3 A May 1934 item from the same paper says two pack strings had started carrying material in for the new lookout on Jerry Johnson point, into what it called the Selway wilderness.3 The tower was a 40-foot pole L-4 design, built that year.1,4,2 A Montana archive caption calls the lookout a 30-foot tower, and it hedges on whether the photograph shows this site.5
The tower was destroyed in 1972.1,4,2
Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as drive-up and destroyed.4 A photograph from circa 1940 in the same Montana archive probably shows this lookout, and its caption says you can still drive to the location.5 Current access rules were not found, so check before going. We found no source that describes what remains there now.
- Jerry Johnson Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/jerryjohnson.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Jerry Johnson, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), quoting The Missoulian (1934), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/jerry-johnson.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Jerry Johnson Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/jerry-johnson-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Jerry Johnson Lookout (photograph by Bud Moore), Montana History Portal, University of Montana Mansfield Library, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/70079 (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: 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
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts (list compiled by Margaret Sand and Cindy Schacher, June 2016) (USDA Forest Service) (opens another site)
- Jerry Johnson Lookout (photograph by Bud Moore, circa 1940) (Montana History Portal, University of Montana Mansfield Library) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Jerry Johnson on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Jerry Johnson Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Jerry Johnson 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.