FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Boundary County, Idaho

Silver Mountain Lookout

Boundary County, ID: a 10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab from the 1930s, listed as gone; no source gives a removal date or describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone; the pages give no removal date and do not describe 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
Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site hike-in and gives no trail details

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower10-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
Unknown
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Boundary County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.96440, −116.74698
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-silver-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 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

No dated events recorded yet: nobody has recorded when this lookout was built or when it came down.

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 Silver Mountain tower was a 10-foot pole structure with an L-4 cab. Both pages date it to the 1930s, and neither gives a year.1,2 It stood in the Kaniksu National Forest, about 12 miles west-southwest of Porthill in Boundary County, at 6,535 feet.1,2

Both sites list the lookout as gone. Neither says when it came down or why.1,2

Neither page describes what, if anything, remains on the mountain today.1,2 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page labels the site hike-in, but it says nothing about trails or whether visitors are welcome.2

Both pages are brief, and neither cites a register, a newspaper or a Forest Service record for these details.1,2

  1. Silver Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/silvermtn235.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Silver Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/silver-mountain-lookout/ (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: 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, 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.