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Fire lookout · Latah County, Idaho

Mount Margaret Lookout

Latah County, Idaho L-4 tower on St. Joe NF, built 1936 and destroyed 1952 per three sites; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1952 per all three sites; 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
Hike-in, per Idaho Fire Lookouts

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a tower atop the west pointThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Latah County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.90303, −116.67900
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-mount-margaret

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 4.0 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. 1936 BuiltL-4 tower atop the west point (firelookout.com); tower with L-4 cab (Forest Lookouts)Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1936 and 1952
  3. 1952 DestroyedListed as destroyed by all three sites; no cause givenSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 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.

Mount Margaret sits in Latah County, Idaho, and is part of the St. Joe National Forest.1,2,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts gives its elevation as 3,765 feet.4

A tower with an L-4 cab went up in 1936, on the west point of the mountain.1,4,2

All three sites say the lookout was destroyed in 1952. None of them gives a cause or describes how it was lost.1,4,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list of Idaho sites marks the site as gone.3

The sources we read do not describe what, if anything, remains on the summit today, or whether the site is open to visitors. Idaho Fire Lookouts calls the lookout a hike-in, so a visit would mean walking in.4

  1. Mt. Margaret Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/mtmargaret.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Mount Margaret, Forest Lookouts (idaholookouts.weebly.com), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/mount-margaret.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Margaret, Mount Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/mount-margaret-lookout/ (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: 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.