Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho
Round Top Mountain Lookout
Kaniksu NF lookout in Bonner County: 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, built 1935, destroyed about 1961. No source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. All three sources date its destruction to about 1961. No source describes what, if anything, 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?
- No, you have to hike
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a 50-foot pole towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1935
- Height
- 50 ft (15.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kaniksu National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Bonner County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 48.28030, −116.24813
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-round-top-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 4.1 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
- 1935 Built50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab; Forest Lookouts calls it a round timber towerSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1935 and 1961
- 1961 Destroyedfirelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts give 1961; Forest Lookouts gives c.1961Sources: 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.
Round Top Mountain Lookout stood on Round Top Mountain, about 3 miles northeast of Hope, in Bonner County, within the Kaniksu National Forest.1,2 The site is listed at 6,149 feet.1
Records date the tower to 1935. It was a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, which Forest Lookouts describes as a round timber tower.1,2,3
Idaho Fire Lookouts has a photo captioned "Round Top circa 1955," from the Stan Meyers Collection.2
All three sources give 1961 as the year it was destroyed.1,2,3 Forest Lookouts gives that date as approximate, c.1961.3
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in and marks the lookout destroyed.2 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.
- Round Top Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/roundtopmtn235.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Round Top Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/round-top-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Round Top Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/round-top-mountain1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
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, 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, height, 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, 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)
- Round Top Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Round Top Mountain Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- Round Top Mountain 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.