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Fire lookout · Latah County, Idaho

Potato Hill Lookout

Latah County, Idaho 15-foot L-4 tower built 1939 near Deary and destroyed in 1964; a cell tower now occupies the site, reached by a gated road over private land.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1964; a cell tower now occupies the site.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Restricted access

Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. Trailhead is gated and the road crosses private, company and state land (onX Maps); no closure dates are posted

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Potato Hill Road is a 2-mile out-and-back from Main Street in Deary

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower15-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1939
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Potlatch Timber Protective Association / St. Joe National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Latah County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.81522, −116.55922
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-potato-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

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. 1921 EventPotlatch TPA report of a new lookout point on Potato Hill; unclear whether a towerSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1921 and 1939
  3. 1939 Built15-foot pole L-4 towerSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, onxmaps.com
  4. No record between 1939 and 1964
  5. 1964 DestroyedTower destroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 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.

Potato Hill sits about a mile north of Deary in Latah County, Idaho, at 4,017 feet.1,2 Locals call it Spud Hill.3

A Twin Falls News item from April 1939, quoted on the Forest Lookouts site, reports a district ranger's statement that the chamber of commerce in Dreary (the item's spelling of Deary) had donated ten acres on the summit for a forest lookout station. The item adds that the money was raised through subscriptions.4

The tower was a 15-foot pole L-4 tower, built in 1939.1,2 The Forest Lookouts site also quotes a 1921 Potlatch TPA annual report that mentions another mile of line built between the town and Potato Hill, where a lookout point was set up.4 The other pages date the tower to 1939, so the two may not describe the same structure.1,2

The tower was destroyed in 1964.1,2,4,3

Today a cell tower occupies the site, according to onX Maps.3 The route is Potato Hill Road, a two-mile out-and-back that starts on Main Street in Deary and is gated at the trailhead.3 It crosses private property, Bennet Lumber land and state parcels, and onX Maps advises visitors to mind property boundaries.3 We found no source saying whether the summit itself is open to the public.

  1. Potato Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/potatohill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Potato Hill Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/potato-hill-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Potato Hill Road - Trail 783, onX Maps, https://www.onxmaps.com/offroad/trails/us/idaho/potato-hill-road-trail-783-ndzdrmxyd6kv (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Potato Hill - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/potato-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Potato Hill Lookout
Potato Hill LookoutPhoto: 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: 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: 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, 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

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