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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Papoose Mountain Lookout

A 1930 pole platform and a 1938 tower with an L-4 cab on the St. Joe National Forest; listed as abandoned, though one list says the tower is gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower1930 pole platform; 1938 tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.04555, −115.51999
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-papoose-mountain

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 3.9 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. 1930 BuiltPole platformSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1938 BuiltTower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 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.

Papoose Mountain's lookout began in 1930 as a pole platform.1,2,3 A pole platform is simply a platform raised on poles. A tower with an L-4 cab followed in 1938.1,2,3

The site lies in the St. Joe National Forest, in Shoshone County.1,4 Forest Lookouts gives its land location as 43N-7E-25.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association places it at 47.04555 north, 115.51999 west.4 A patrol point lay two miles southeast, atop Badger Mountain.1

The lookout is listed as abandoned.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list, however, marks the tower as gone.4 The sources disagree on whether the tower is gone or only abandoned.1,2,4

None of the sources we read describe what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.1,2,3,4

  1. Papoose Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/papoosemtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Papoose Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/papoose-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Shoshone County, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id/ (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: 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, agency, 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.