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Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho

Lightning Peak Lookout

1933 L-4 ground cabin on Lightning Peak, Payette National Forest, Valley County, Idaho; destroyed 1960 or 1963 (sources differ); no source describes what remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1960 or 1963 (sources differ); no source describes what, if anything, remains at the site

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
Ground-level cabL-4 cab, described as a 14 x 14 ground cabinThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Valley County, Idaho
Coordinates
44.94690, −115.12813
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-lightning-peak-2

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 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. 1933 BuiltL-4 cab erected; Forest Lookouts describes a 14 x 14 ground cabinSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1933 and 1957
  3. 1957 EventUniversity of Idaho photo captioned Old Lightning Peak Lookout, photo text Aug. 1957Source: lib.uidaho.edu
  4. 1960 DestroyedFirelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts give 1960; Forest Lookouts, citing Kresek, gives 1963Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 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.

A ground cabin was built on Lightning Peak in Valley County in 1933.1,2,3 Firelookout.com calls it an L-4 cab, and the Forest Lookouts page describes a 14 x 14 ground cabin.1,3 The peak sits in the Payette National Forest, 18 miles east of Yellow Pine, at 8,528 feet.1,2

A University of Idaho archive photograph captioned "Old Lightning Peak Lookout" is dated August 1957.4 The archive files it under the Payette National Forest and Valley County.4 The caption therefore places a lookout on the peak in 1957, but the archive entry does not say which cab it was.4

The sources disagree on when it was destroyed. Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts both give 1960.1,2 The Forest Lookouts page, which cites Kresek, gives 1963.3

No source I read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today. The Idaho site tags the peak as hike-in.2 Whether the public can reach it now is not stated in any source, so check with the Payette National Forest before any trip.2

  1. Lightning Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/lightningpeak308.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Lightning Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/lightning-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Lightning Peak - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/lightning-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Old Lightning Peak Lookout, Archival Idaho Photograph Collection, University of Idaho Library, https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/archivalidaho/items/archivalidaho820.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Lightning Peak Lookout
Lightning Peak LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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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 LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) 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
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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.