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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Roundtop Mountain Lookout

St. Joe National Forest lookout in Shoshone County, Idaho: pole tower from 1922, replaced 1927 and 1952, destroyed 1979; no source describes what remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as tower gone after its 1979 destruction. No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site.

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?
Yes, you can drive up
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as drive-up.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towersuccessive towers: 50-foot pole with cab (1922), 45-foot steel windmill (1927), 53-foot treated timber L-4 (1952)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1922
Height
53 ft (16.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.11093, −115.83360
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-roundtop-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 4.0 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. 1922 Built50-foot pole tower with 7x7 cab and a ground cabinSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1927 Replaced by a new structure45-foot steel windmill tower with 6x6 cab. firelookout.com gives 1927; Forest Lookouts gives c.1927, so the story says around 1927Sources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1927 and 1952
  4. 1952 Built53-foot treated timber tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1952 and 1979
  6. 1979 DestroyedDestroyed; sources 1-3 give 1979. Source 4 lists the tower as gone with no year. No cause givenSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  7. 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.

The Roundtop Mountain site is in the St. Joe National Forest, at 6,003 feet.1 It lies in Shoshone County.2

The site opened in 1922 with a pole tower 50 feet tall, a cab 7 feet square, and a ground cabin for living quarters.3,4 Around 1927 a 45-foot steel windmill tower, with a 6-foot-square cab, replaced the first one.3,4 In 1952 a third tower went up: 53 feet of treated timber, topped by an L-4 cab.3,1,4 The firelookout.com page marks two runs of years, 1927 to 1952 and 1952 to 1979, and Idaho Fire Lookouts gives the last tower as 53 feet tall.3,1

The tower was destroyed in 1979.3,1,4 Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as drive-up.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association marks it as a tower that is gone.2

No source we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether visitors may go there.3

  1. Roundtop Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/roundtop-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Roundtop Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/roundtopmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Shoshone County - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Roundtop Mountain Lookout
Roundtop 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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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

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