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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Little Baldy Lookout

Camp 1920, log cabin 1922, 20-foot L-4 pole tower 1940 on Little Baldy, Shoshone County, Idaho; destroyed 1970; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1970 per firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and the Weebly list; no source describes what remains.

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 labels the site hike-in. No source describes the site today or any access rule.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower20-foot pole L-4 tower on the west pointThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1922
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.69337, −115.84096
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-little-baldy

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. 1920 EventCamp listed at the siteSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1922 BuiltLog cabin with cupola (described as log cupola cabin or cupola log cabin)Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1922 and 1940
  4. 1940 Built20-foot pole L-4 tower on the west pointSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1946 StaffedMr. and Mrs. Joe Witt named as lookoutsSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  6. No record between 1946 and 1970
  7. 1970 DestroyedAll three lists give 1970 as the year the tower was destroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  8. 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.

Little Baldy lies in Shoshone County, Idaho, within the Coeur d'Alene National Forest.1,2 The Weebly list gives its location as 50N-5E-8, meaning township 50 north, range 5 east, section 8.2

A camp is listed there in 1920, and a log cabin with a cupola in 1922.1,3,2

In 1940 a 20-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab went up on the west point.1,3,2

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Witt are the lookouts named for 1946.1,3

All three sources record the tower as destroyed in 1970.1,3,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list also marks it as gone.4

No source describes what remains of the camp, the cabin or the tower on the site today.1,3,2,4 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page calls the site hike-in, which means it is reached on foot, but no source says whether the ground is open to visitors.3

  1. Little Baldy Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/littlebaldy244.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Shoshone County - Forest Lookouts, idaholookouts.weebly.com, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Little Baldy Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/little-baldy-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho lookout list, 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. 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.