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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Puzzle Point Lookout

Two-story log cupola cabin built in 1929 in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Idaho County; destroyed about 1949 and listed as hike-in.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed about 1949; the sources read do not describe what remains

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. Listed as hike-in, inside the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Hike-in site per Idaho Fire Lookouts; inside the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Two-story buildingTwo-story log cabin with cupolaThe design: Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.09715, −114.97510
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-puzzle-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 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. 1929 BuiltTwo-story log cupola cabin, about 3 miles southwest of the Moose Creek Ranger StationSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1929 and 1949
  3. 1949 DestroyedDestroyed about 1949 (firelookout.com says 'about 1949'; other sources give 1949)Sources: 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.

Puzzle Point Lookout stood in Idaho County, in the Nez Perce National Forest, about three miles southwest of the Moose Creek Ranger Station.1,2,3 The site sits at an elevation of 6,055 feet, inside the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.1

An aviation blog calls the Moose Creek Ranger Station one of the most isolated Forest Service posts in the country. It says no road comes within about 25 miles of the station in any direction.4

The lookout was a two-story log structure topped by a cupola, built in 1929.1,5,2 An April 2010 Forest Service list, compiled partly from Ray Kresek's book on Northwest lookouts, gives the same year.3

The cabin was destroyed about 1949.1,2,3 We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.

The Idaho Fire Lookouts page lists the site as hike-in.5

  1. Puzzle Point Fire Lookout Cabin, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.firelookout.com/id/puzzlepoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Puzzle Point, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/puzzle-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Nez Perce National Forest Lookouts, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259204 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Moose Creek, One Uniform One, the Grass Strip Deep in the Selway, Radio Hangar, https://radiohangar.com/blog/posts/moose-creek-one-uniform-one-the-grass-strip-deep-in-the-selway-bitterroot-where-the-ranger-station/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Puzzle Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/puzzle-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Puzzle Point Lookout
Puzzle Point 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: 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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