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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Orphan Point Lookout

Shoshone County, ID St. Joe NF site: a 1939 camp, a 1942 tower with an L-4 cab, destroyed 1954; no source describes what remains at the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed 1954 per firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and the Shoshone County list; the Forest Fire Lookout Association list marks it Tower Gone

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

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerTower with an L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1942
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.04189, −115.94112
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-orphan-point

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 3.6 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. 1939 EventListed as a campSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1942 BuiltTower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1954 DestroyedListed as destroyedSources: 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.

Orphan Point was a lookout on the St. Joe National Forest in Shoshone County, Idaho.1,2,3 The county list gives the code 43N-4E-27 for its place in the forest.2

In 1939 the site is listed as a camp. In 1942 it had a tower with an L-4 cab.1,4,2

All three lookout listings say the tower was destroyed in 1954.1,4,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the site as gone, and it records the type as tower.3 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page gives its elevation as 6,250 feet.4

Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site as hike-in, meaning visitors reach it on foot.4 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or says whether it is open to visitors.

  1. Orphan Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/orphanpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Shoshone County - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (idaholookouts.weebly.com), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Orphan Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/orphan-point-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. 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.