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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Newport Hill

Kaniksu NF lookout in Bonner County: a 1936 steel tower, a 1959 Aermotor tower, both removed. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower and cabin removed; the removal date is not given. 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?
Yes, you can drive up
Trail
Historical listing only; Idaho Fire Lookouts gives its status as Removed

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower40-foot Aermotor steel tower with cabin living quarters (1959 listings); a 45-foot steel tower was reported in 1936The design: Aermotor
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
45 ft (13.7 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.23247, −116.98888
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-newport-hill

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 4.1 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 BuiltForest Service ranger report, printed in the Newport Miner, describes a 45-foot steel tower with a 7x7 observatorySource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1938 AlteredCrow's nest and tent cabin addedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. No record between 1938 and 1959
  4. 1959 Built40-foot Aermotor steel tower with cabin living quarters, per two listingsSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  5. 1959 MovedPer the Binarch Mountain history, its Aermotor tower was dismantled and moved to Newport Hill; that history gives 80 feetSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Newport Hill stood in Bonner County, Idaho, about four miles north-northeast of Oldtown, in the Kaniksu National Forest.1 In August 1936 the Newport Miner printed a Forest Service ranger's report on the construction of a 45-foot steel lookout tower with a 7 by 7 foot observatory on the summit.2 The ranger said the view was good, though the tower could not be seen from the town of Newport.2

A crow's nest and a tent cabin were added in 1938.1,3 Later listings describe a 40-foot tower of Aermotor steel, built in 1959, with living quarters in a cabin.1,3 A history of the Binarch Mountain lookout, also in Bonner County, says that lookout's Aermotor tower was dismantled and moved to Newport Hill in 1959.4 That history gives the tower a height of 80 feet, which does not match the 40 feet listed for Newport Hill, so the sources do not agree on the structure.4,1,3

The listings say the tower and cabin have since come down.1,3 The firelookout.com header reads "R.I.P. 1959-?" and gives no end date.1 Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site drive-up and marks it removed.3

No source described for this story says what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Newport Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/newporthill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Newport Hill, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), quoting the Newport Miner of August 20, 1936, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/newport-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Newport Hill, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/newport-hill/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Binarch Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), citing Kresek, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/binarch-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Newport Hill
Newport HillPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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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: height, 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

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