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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Lightning Peak Lookout

1939 80-foot Aermotor steel fire tower on Lightning Peak, Bonner County, Idaho; listed as gone in 1953, and no source describes what remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone by 1953; no source describes what, if anything, remains at the peak

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
Cab on a tower80-foot Aermotor LX-24 steel tower with 7x7 cabThe design: Aermotor LX-24 / LX-25
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1939
Height
80 ft (24.4 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.41369, −116.33962
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-lightning-peak

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 4.0 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. 1928 StaffedLightning Creek lookout reported smoke blocking views of the Pack River and Upper Grouse Creek districts (Pend Oreille Review, quoted by Forest Lookouts)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1939 Built80-foot Aermotor LX-24 steel tower with 7x7 cabSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. 1941 StaffedSandpoint Bulletin item, quoted by Forest Lookouts, identifies Lynn Dawnson with the Lightning Creek lookoutSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1949 StaffedGarreth Rouse listed as known staff, citing Bonners Ferry Herald 07/21/1949Source: idahofirelookouts.com
  5. 1953 AbandonedSource: Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com)
  6. 1953 EventListed as Gone; Idaho Fire Lookouts also tags the site Removed; the sources do not say how it came downSources: 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.

A steel fire tower was built on Lightning Peak in Bonner County in 1939.1,2,3 The Forest Lookouts page describes an 80-foot Aermotor LX-24 with a 7x7 cab and credits the detail to Kresek.1 Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts both give 80 feet for the steel tower, and the Idaho site lists the peak at 3,050 feet in the Kaniksu National Forest.2,3

The same Forest Lookouts page quotes a 1933 newspaper report of a 70-foot tower built at the Little Lightning creek station. It does not say whether that tower stood on this peak.1

Few people are named. Idaho Fire Lookouts lists Garreth Rouse as known staff in 1949, citing a Bonners Ferry Herald item from July of that year.3 The Forest Lookouts page quotes a 1941 Sandpoint Bulletin item that identifies Lynn Dawnson with the Lightning Creek lookout.1 A 1928 Pend Oreille Review item, also quoted there, reports that smoke blocked the Lightning Creek lookout's view of the Pack River and Upper Grouse Creek districts.1

Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts both give 1953 as the year the tower was gone.2,3 The Idaho site also tags it "Removed," and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks it as a gone tower.3,4

No source I read describes what, if anything, is still on the peak. The Idaho site tags the peak as hike-in.3 It does not say whether the public may go up, so check with the Kaniksu National Forest before any trip.3

  1. Lightning Peak - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/lightning-peak1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Lightning Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/lightningpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Lightning Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/lightning-peak-lookout-2/ (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: dates, 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: what it is built of, design, height, 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, 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.