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Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho

Shell Rock Peak (Black Pole)

Also known as Shell Rock Peak, Shell Rock (Black Pole) Lookout

Valley County lookout: L-4 cab from 1936, abandoned in 1967 and listed as gone; a hike-in site where no source describes what remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1967; no source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today

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
Listed as a hike-in by Idaho Fire Lookouts; no route or distance is given

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Valley County, Idaho
Coordinates
44.81590, −115.58080
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-shell-rock-peak-black-pole

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. 1936 BuiltL-4 cabSources: idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1936 and 1967
  3. 1967 AbandonedLookout abandonedSources: idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.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.

Shell Rock Peak, also called Black Pole, sits in the Payette National Forest about 11 miles south-southwest of Yellow Pine in Valley County, Idaho.1,2 Its elevation is listed as 8,565 feet.1,2

The earliest date the sources give is 1936, for an L-4 cab.1,2 The lookout was abandoned in 1967.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a gone ground structure, placed at 44.8159, -115.5808.3 Idaho Fire Lookouts files the page under its West Central region.1

The name is easy to mix up. Shellrock Peak, a separate lookout, appears on the same association list as standing.3

Today the sources we read do not describe what, if anything, remains on the peak. Idaho Fire Lookouts classes the site as a hike-in, not a drive-up.1 Nothing we read says whether it is open to visitors.

  1. Shell Rock (Black Pole) Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/shell-rock-black-pole-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Shell Rock Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/shellrock.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (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. 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

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