FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

North Snow Peak Lookout

Coeur d'Alene NF 30-foot pole L-4 tower, built 1934 and destroyed 1953; four footings reported on the site in a September 2025 post.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1953; Idaho Fire Lookouts reports four footings still on the site

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
Filed as hike-in by idahofirelookouts.com

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.95965, −116.28780
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-north-snow-peak

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 4.3 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. 1934 Built30-foot pole tower with L-4 cab on the northernmost pointSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1953
  3. 1953 DestroyedDestroyed in 1953Sources: 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.

North Snow Peak sits in Shoshone County, Idaho, on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest.1,2 In 1934 a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab went up on the peak's northernmost point.1,3,2 Firelookout.com places the site seven miles east of Lakeview, at 4,630 feet.1

The tower was destroyed in 1953, according to all three history pages.1,3,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the structure as gone.4

The most recent report found is a post on Idaho Fire Lookouts dated September 14, 2025. Its writers found four footings from a tower that had been toppled, and no other remains on the site.3 The same site page files the lookout as a hike-in, so the site is reached on foot.3 No source says whether the site is open to visitors now.

  1. North Snow Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/northsnowpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. North Snow Peak, Forest Lookouts (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/north-snow-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. North Snow Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/north-snow-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho lookouts list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

North Snow Peak Lookout
North Snow Peak 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.

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, 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, 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, height, 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.