Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho
Shoshone Peak Lookout
Shoshone County, ID: a 40-foot pole L-4 lookout built in 1931 that burned the same year and was never replaced; only cement footings are described today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned in 1931 and never replaced; the Idaho Fire Lookouts page describes only cement footings left
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 labels the site hike-in and gives no trail details
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower40-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Coeur d'Alene National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Shoshone County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.90160, −116.03656
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-shoshone-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.
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
- 1931 Built40-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- 1931 BurnedBurned in the McPherson Fire the same year; never replacedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.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.
Shoshone Peak had a short life as a lookout. Its tower was a 40-foot pole structure with an L-4 cab, built in 1931 in the Coeur d'Alene National Forest about 25 miles north of Kellogg, in Shoshone County.1,2 The two pages that describe it disagree on the peak's elevation: one gives 5,425 feet and the other 5,238 feet.1,2
That same year a wildfire burned the tower. firelookout.com names the fire as the McPherson Fire, and the tower was never replaced.1,2 A University of Idaho photo from the Civilian Conservation Corps collection shows a replanting crew on slopes above the Coeur d'Alene River, land the 1931 McPherson fire had burned.3
The Idaho Fire Lookouts page is a July 2023 post. Its writer says little is left to see beyond concrete footings, which the post links to the tower's very short life.2 The page marks the site as hike-in but gives no trail details. Neither page says whether visitors are welcome or whether anything beyond the footings remains.1,2
- Shoshone Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/shoshonepeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Shoshone Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/shoshone-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- CCC Replanting Crew, Civilian Conservation Corps in Idaho Collection, University of Idaho Library, https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/cccidaho/items/cccidaho404.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
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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: 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
- 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
- CCC Replanting Crew, Civilian Conservation Corps in Idaho Collection (University of Idaho Library) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Shoshone Peak on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Shoshone Peak Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.