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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Jug Rock Lookout

St. Joe National Forest lookout in Shoshone County: 1915 log cabin, 1919 platform tower, 1939 L-4 tower, gone by 1954; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone by 1954 per two pages and a state list; no source describes what remains

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Idaho Fire Lookouts files it as a hike-in site on St. Joe National Forest land

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Hike-in per Idaho Fire Lookouts

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerlog cabin, then a platform tower, then an L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1915
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.00974, −115.81482
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-jug-rock

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 4.2 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. 1915 BuiltLog cabin about three-quarters of a mile west; firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts say a trapper built the original cabin in the 1890sSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1919 BuiltPlatform towerSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1919 and 1939
  4. 1939 BuiltL-4 tower with cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1939 and 1954
  6. 1954 RemovedListed as gone in 1954; no source gives a causeSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  7. 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.

Jug Rock Lookout stood in Shoshone County on the St. Joe National Forest, about 16 miles south of Avery, at an elevation of 6,530 feet.1

The first structure was a log cabin about three-quarters of a mile west of the lookout site, listed for 1915.1,2 Two pages say a trapper built the original cabin in the 1890s.1,3 A platform tower followed in 1919.1,2 By 1939 the site had an L-4 tower.1,2

The firelookout.com page gives 1954 as the year the lookout was gone, and the Idaho Fire Lookouts page agrees.1,3 A Forest Fire Lookout Association list also marks the tower as gone.4 Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site as a hike-in, with the status abandoned and gone.3

The site lies on national forest land.1 No source we found describes what, if anything, remains there today.

  1. Jug Rock Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/jugrock.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Jug Rock, Forest Lookouts (Shoshone County list), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Jug Rock Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/jug-rock-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (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: 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, status, agency, access, 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.