Fire lookout · Benewah County, Idaho
Pettis Peak
Also known as Pettis Point Lookout
Benewah County, ID tower with an L-4 cab, recorded 1937 and destroyed 1953; a 2025 visit found footings and 1956 benchmarks, no standing structure.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1953; a 2025 visit found footings and benchmarks but no tower
Visit & stay
Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.
Access
Open to the public. The 2025 visit was a short hike up from the road; no closure is described in the sources read
- Road to the top?
- No, you have to hike
- Trail
- A short hike up from the road, per a 2025 visit
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerTower with an L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1937
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- St. Joe National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Benewah County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.23576, −116.41164
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-pettis-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.
Downloads about 4.4 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
- 1937 BuiltRecorded as a tower with an L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1937 and 1953
- 1953 DestroyedThe three pages that give a year all say 1953; Idaho Fire Lookouts attributes it to the inventory historySources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Pettis Peak sits in Benewah County, Idaho, about nine miles southeast of St. Maries, at an elevation of 4,235 feet.1 The St. Joe National Forest is listed as its agency, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the site as gone.1,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts calls it Pettis Point Lookout.3
A tower with an L-4 cab is recorded here in 1937.1,4 The three pages that give a year for its destruction all say 1953.1,3,4 Idaho Fire Lookouts says that date comes from the inventory history.3
A September 2025 post by Idaho Fire Lookouts describes a short hike up from the road to the site, where the writers found four cement footings and corner tie-downs.3 There may also have been railings, in very poor shape, though the writers could only guess what they were.3 Two benchmarks were there too, dated 1956. The writers found those dates odd for a tower destroyed in 1953, though they noted benchmarks can be placed on old cement, and said they would keep researching.3
The post does not clearly tie the footings to the 1937 tower: the writers first took the site for a camp, then realized they had been reading the wrong inventory entry.3 Forest Lookouts reproduces a 1956 U.S. Geological Survey description of a station on Pettis Peak.4
Today the only remains described are footings, possible railings and benchmarks, with no tower standing. The sources we read describe no closure, and the hike described in the 2025 post was a short walk from the road, so the site appears open to visitors. There is no tower left to climb.
- Pettis Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/pettispeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Pettis Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/pettis-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Pettis Point, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/pettis-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
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Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, access, 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
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Pettis Peak on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Pettis Point Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Pettis Peak on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.