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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Prater Mountain Lookout

Bonner County, Idaho: 1934 10-foot L-4 lookout and 62-foot L-6 patrol tower, both gone by 1960; no source describes what remains or current access.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Both towers were gone by 1960; no source describes what remains.

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 tower10-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
10 ft (3.0 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Priest Lake TPA
Land
Unknown
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.30153, −116.80506
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-prater-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 its recorded height.

Downloads about 4.2 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 Built62-foot pole L-6 patrol tower about 1/4 mile eastSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1960
  3. 1960 AbandonedSource: Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com)
  4. 1960 DestroyedBoth towers gone by 1960; Forest Lookouts records 'Destroyed'Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 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.

Prater Mountain is in Bonner County, Idaho, about nine miles north-northeast of Priest River, at 4,594 feet.1,2 The sources name the Priest Lake TPA as the agency for the site.1,2,3

In 1934 a 10-foot pole lookout with an L-4 cab went up on the southwest summit.1,2,3 A 62-foot pole L-6 patrol tower was built about a quarter mile to the east that same year.1,2

By 1960 neither tower remained.1,2 Forest Lookouts records the 1960 entry as destruction.3 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page files the site under "Destroyed/Removed," and the Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a tower that is gone.2,4

None of the sources describes what, if anything, remains on the summit now. The Idaho Fire Lookouts page tags the site "Hike-In," the only access note we found, and it does not say whether the land is open to visitors today.2

  1. Prater Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/pratermtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Prater Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/prater-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Prater Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/prater-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts (by Region), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id/id-rg/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Prater Mountain Lookout
Prater Mountain 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: design, height, 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, 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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