FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Boundary County, Idaho

Queen Mountain Lookout

Boundary County cupola cabin on Queen Mountain, dated 1928 and abandoned around 1930 after lightning trouble; a 2020 photo visit found wreckage.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com and Rex's page list it as gone; a 2020 photo visit found wreckage that Peakbagging calls all that 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. Idaho Fire Lookouts lists it as hike-in on Kaniksu National Forest land; no closure or permit is described in the sources read

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabcupola cabinThe design: Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1928
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Boundary County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.87820, −116.21497
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-queen-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 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. 1914 Event1914 newspaper item, quoted on Rex's page, names the Mt. Queen lookout as one of five lookout points, with telephone communications established to itSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1928 BuiltCupola cabin; firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts give 1928, Peakbagging says around 1928Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, peakbagging.com
  3. 1930 AbandonedIdaho Fire Lookouts and Peakbagging give 1930; firelookout.com says the 1930sSources: idahofirelookouts.com, peakbagging.com, firelookout.com
  4. 1933 Staffedfirelookout.com lists Victor Foss under 1933; the page does not state a role, and the date conflicts with a 1930 abandonmentSource: firelookout.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.

Queen Mountain Lookout was a cupola cabin on Queen Mountain in the Kaniksu National Forest, about 13 miles north-northeast of Bonners Ferry in Boundary County.1,2,3 Sources date the cabin to 1928.1,2,3

An earlier item complicates that date. A 1914 newspaper item, quoted on Rex's page, names the Mt. Queen lookout as one of five lookout points and says telephone communications were established to it at that time.4 The sources do not say whether an earlier structure stood there before the 1928 cabin.

The sources disagree on when the cabin was dropped. Idaho Fire Lookouts gives 1930 and says the site was dropped after two years, once it was found to be an extreme lightning target.2 Peakbagging gives the same year.3 Firelookout.com says it was abandoned in the 1930s for the same lightning reason, and it lists Victor Foss under 1933, which does not fit a 1930 abandonment.1

Firelookout.com and Rex's page both mark the lookout gone.1,4 A photo visit on August 12, 2020, found only wreckage, which Peakbagging describes as the remains of the lookout.3 A benchmark disk on a rock outcrop east of the wreckage could not be found on that visit.3 Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.2 Rex's page places the lookout in the Pend Oreille National Forest, the name its 1914 item uses; the other pages name the Kaniksu National Forest.1,2,4,3

  1. Queen Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/queenmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Queen Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/queen-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Queen Mountain, Idaho, Peakbagging.com, http://www.peakbagging.com/IDLookoutPhotos/QueenMtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Queen Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/queen-mountain.html (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: dates, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.