Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho
Larch Mountain
Larch Mountain lookout, Coeur d'Alene NF: 30-foot pole L-4 tower built 1934, destroyed 1955; a 2025 visit found footings, a chimney and the alidade stand.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1955. A 2025 Idaho Fire Lookouts visit found three of the cement footings, a chimney, a bed frame and debris, and the alidade stand moved nearby.
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
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts describes a hike-in: hot, but not a difficult walk.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Coeur d'Alene National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Shoshone County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 48.01733, −116.27380
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-larch-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
- 1934 Built30-foot pole L-4 tower; both sites date it to 1934Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- No record between 1934 and 1955
- 1955 DestroyedBoth sites give 1955 as the year it was destroyed; cause not statedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- 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 Larch Mountain lookout stood in the Coeur d'Alene National Forest, about 10 miles south-southwest of Clark Fork in Shoshone County, at 5,306 feet.1,2
A 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab went up in 1934.1,2
Both sites give 1955 as the year it was destroyed.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list also marks it as gone.3
In a post dated September 14, 2025, Idaho Fire Lookouts describes hiking to the site.2 The writers said the tower appeared to have burned.2 They found that the alidade stand had been taken off and set down nearby, and that its top mechanism still slides.2 They also found three of the cement footings, a chimney, a bed frame and other debris.2
The writers call it a hike-in and say the walk was hot but not difficult.2 No source read says whether the site is open to the public.1,2,3
- Larch Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/larchmtn244.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Larch Mountain, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/larch-mountain/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (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
- 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
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Larch Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Larch Mountain on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.