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Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho

Missouri Ridge Lookout

Payette NF tower in Valley County, Idaho, built 1935 as a ten-foot pole L-4; sources disagree on destroyed in 1960 vs removed in the 1960s; site today undescribed.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Two sources say destroyed in 1960; a third says removed in the 1960s. 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?
Unknown
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as hike-in

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerten-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Valley County, Idaho
Coordinates
44.98242, −115.39278 sources disagree
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-missouri-ridge

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 3.8 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. 1935 BuiltTen-foot pole tower with L-4 cab at the southwest end of the ridgeSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1960
  3. 1960 DestroyedSources 1 and 2 give 1960; source 3 gives removal in the 1960sSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1960 RemovedSource 3 gives removal in the 1960s; conflicts with destroyed in 1960Source: 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.

Missouri Ridge lies in the Payette National Forest, five miles east of Yellow Pine in Valley County, Idaho, at 8,128 feet.1,2 A lookout tower went up there in 1935: a ten-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, set at the southwest end of the ridge.1,3 The Forest Lookouts page gives its township, range and section as 19N-9E-17.3

The sources disagree on how the tower ended: two give 1960 as the year it was destroyed,1,2 while a third says it was removed during the 1960s.3

The University of Idaho's Archival Idaho collection holds a photograph record titled "Missouri Ridge Lookout."4 Its photo text reads "Profile Peak in background."4

None of the pages I read describes what, if anything, is left on the ridge today. The Idaho Fire Lookouts listing tags the site as a hike-in and marks the tower as destroyed.2

  1. Missouri Ridge Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/missouriridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Missouri Ridge Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/missouri-ridge-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Missouri Ridge, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/missouri-ridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Missouri Ridge Lookout, Archival Idaho Photograph Collection, University of Idaho Library, https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/archivalidaho/items/archivalidaho157.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Missouri Ridge Lookout
Missouri Ridge LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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.

Where sources disagree

We show disagreements between sources instead of quietly picking one. If you know which is right, please tell us.

  • Sources disagree on the location by 2.6 km (1.6 mi).

    • FFLA: 44.98242, −115.39278
    • Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com): 44.99630, −115.36567

    The map uses the position from FFLA.

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: 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
  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.