Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho
Maple Lake Lookout
Gone lookout on Maple Lake, Idaho County: two-story cupola cabin built 1925 (D-6 per Forest Lookouts); no removal date or staffing found.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Marked gone by Idaho Fire Lookouts and firelookout.com; no removal date or cause given.
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?
- Unknown
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Ground-level cabtwo-story cabin with cupola; the Forest Lookouts page calls it a D-6 cupola cabinThe design: D-6
- Built of
- WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
- Built
- 1925
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest (Idaho Fire Lookouts and firelookout.com add Nez Perce)
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Idaho County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.29297, −114.75937
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-maple-lake
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 3.9 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
- 1925 BuiltTwo-story cabin with cupola; firelookout.com says frameSources: idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.
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.
Maple Lake Lookout stood at about 7,554 feet in Idaho County.1,2 The Idaho Fire Lookouts site and firelookout.com both describe a two-story cabin topped by a cupola, built in 1925.3,1 The Forest Lookouts page calls it a D-6 cupola cabin from that year.2
The sources do not agree on the forest. Forest Lookouts names only the Clearwater National Forest, while the other two pages name the Clearwater and Nez Perce forests together.3,1,2 Firelookout.com places the lookout 14 miles south of the Powell Ranger Station.1
The Idaho Fire Lookouts site does not yet have a documented staffing history for the lookout.3
Both the Idaho Fire Lookouts page and firelookout.com mark the lookout as gone.3,1
No source we read describes what remains at the site today. The Idaho Fire Lookouts page labels the lookout hike-in, but it also marks the lookout gone, so that label does not tell us whether the site can be visited now.3 Because two sources place the site in the Clearwater and Nez Perce forests, ask the Forest Service before going to look.3,1
- Maple Lake Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/maplelake.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Maple Lake - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/maple-lake.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Maple Lake Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/maple-lake-lookout/ (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: 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) Gave us: what it is built of, design, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, staffing, 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)
- Maple Lake on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Maple Lake Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Maple Lake on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.