Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho
Spion Kop Lookout
Coeur d'Alene NF lookout: 30-foot pole L-4 tower built 1934, destroyed 1955; only scattered remnants are described at the hike-in site.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1955 per two sources; the site keeps only scattered remnants
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
- Listed as a hike-in on idahofirelookouts.com
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Coeur d'Alene National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Shoshone County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.90502, −116.09091 sources disagree
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-spion-kop
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 4.1 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
- 1934 Built30' pole L-4 tower, also a patrol point one mile southwest atop a 5142-foot pointSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1934 and 1955
- 1955 DestroyedListed as destroyed (firelookout.com) and gone (idahofirelookouts.com); no cause given in the sources readSources: 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.
Spion Kop was a fire lookout on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest, about 24 miles north of Kellogg in Shoshone County, Idaho.1 The tower was a 30-foot pole structure with an L-4 cab, put up in 1934.1,2,3 A patrol point stood about a mile to the southwest, on a summit of 5,142 feet.1,2
Two sources date the loss of the tower to 1955.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list of Idaho towers marks it as gone.4 The two lookout-history sites give different elevations for the spot, 5,508 feet and 5,502 feet.1,2
Today only scraps seem to be left.2 The Idaho Fire Lookouts site says the remnants are hard to find. They include a board nailed to a tree, a privy hole, scattered cement, two benchmarks, and possibly a hunting blind.2 The same site lists the spot as a hike-in, and we found no source saying whether it is open to visitors.2
- Spion Kop Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/spionkop.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Spion Kop Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/spion-kop-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Shoshone County - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/shoshone-county.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
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Where sources disagree
We show disagreements between sources instead of quietly picking one. If you know which is right, please tell us.
Sources disagree on the location by 2.0 km (1.2 mi).
- FFLA: 47.90502, −116.09091
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com): 47.88742, −116.09434
The map uses the position from FFLA.
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, 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
- Shoshone County - Forest Lookouts (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Spion Kop on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Spion Kop 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.