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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Schafer Peak Lookout

The 1954 timber tower was moved off the peak in 1976; sources name different buyers, and one diarist's hearsay points to about 1972. A 2025 visit account found six cement footings and outhouse ruins on the summit.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The 1954 tower was moved off the peak in 1976. firelookout.com says it was sold to a Clark Fork farmer; a 2025 account names a family as the buyer and says most, if not all, of its furniture and windows are now reused in that family's home. The 2025 visit account found six cement footings (four attributed to the 1950s tower) and outhouse ruins on the summit.

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
Trail
A visit account posted in September 2025 says the writers hiked in twice, once by the Green Monarch trail and once by a shorter route they call steep.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1938
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.10998, −116.36987
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-schafer-peak

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 4.3 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. 1938 Built30-foot round timber tower with an L-4 cabSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1938 and 1953
  3. 1953 StaffedPaul Mace, first seasonSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1954 Replaced by a new structure41-foot treated timber tower with an L-4 cab; Paul Mace's second seasonSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  5. 1967 StaffedHarry CrawfordSource: firelookout.com
  6. 1969 StaffedJerry Tate of Spokane, July 1969Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  7. 1976 MovedSold and moved off the peak; buyer given as a Clark Fork farmer (firelookout.com) and as a family (2025 account)Sources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  8. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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 first lookout on Schafer Peak was a 30-foot round timber tower with an L-4 cab.1 The Forest Lookouts history dates it to 1938 and attributes that entry to Kresek.1 In 1954 a taller, 41-foot treated timber tower with an L-4 cab replaced it.1,2 Paul Mace, who staffed the peak in 1953 and 1954, wrote that the new tower's legs were set in concrete and that it went up late in his second stint.3

Other lookouts named in the sources include Harry Crawford, in 1967,2 and Jerry Tate of Spokane. A Sandpoint paper reported Tate on the peak in July 1969, with lightning but no fires.1

The tower was sold to a Clark Fork farmer and removed in 1976, according to firelookout.com.2 The Forest Lookouts page says a private party bought it that year and moved it.1 A 2025 account names a family as the buyer, not a farmer, and says most, if not all, of the tower's furniture and windows are now reused in that family's home.4 Mace wrote that, as he understood it, the tower was abandoned after 18 years of service. Counting 18 years from 1954 gives 1972, not 1976.3

A visit account posted in September 2025 says the writers hiked in twice, once by the Green Monarch trail and once by a shorter route they call steep.4 They counted six cement footings at the site. They attributed four to the newer tower, built in the 1950s, and could not find more than two of the original footings from the earlier tower.4 They also found the ruins of three outhouses.4 No source I found gives current access rules, and I found no later account of the site than the 2025 one.

  1. Shaffer Peak, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shaffer-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Schafer Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/schaferpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Paul Mace's Schafer Peak Lookout Recollections, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/tales-from-a-lookout/paul-maces-schafer-peak-lookout-recollections/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Schafer Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/schafer-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Schafer Peak Lookout
Schafer Peak 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: 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
  5. 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

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