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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Split Creek Point

Clearwater NF lookout: 30-foot L-4 tower built 1931, burned in the 1934 Pete King Fire and never rebuilt; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned in the 1934 Pete King Fire and never rebuilt

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
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot timber tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.23289, −115.36043
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-split-creek-point

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 4.0 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

  1. 1931 Built30-foot timber tower with L-4 cab; credited to Earl Bollman and Delbert Cox in a 1981 historySources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. 1934 BurnedBurned in the Pete King Fire; the 1981 history says destroyed by fire, and the Forest Lookouts page says never rebuiltSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1934 DestroyedSource: Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.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.

Split Creek Point is a lookout site on a ridge in the Clearwater National Forest, in Idaho County, about 29 miles east-northeast of Kooskia.1,2 The spot sits at 5,660 feet.1,3

The lookout was a 30-foot timber tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1931.2 A 1981 history of the Lochsa Ranger District credits Earl Bollman and Delbert Cox with building it.2

The Pete King Fire burned the lookout in 1934.1,3 That fire was started by lightning on the morning of August 11, in Idaho's Lochsa River Canyon, and its final area is listed at 60,000 acres.4 The 1981 history says the structure was destroyed by fire in 1934 and that the point was dropped from the fire plan. The same Forest Lookouts page says the lookout was never rebuilt.2

The sources do not describe what, if anything, remains on the ridge today.1,5 The Idaho Fire Lookouts site lists the spot as a hike-in and says the tower burned in a wildfire, but it does not say whether the site is open to visitors.5

Do not confuse this site with a different Split Creek Point Lookout in the Payette National Forest.6 That lookout was built in 1933, and its tower was disassembled in 2008.7 Its cab is now in a museum in McCall, Idaho.7

  1. Split Creek Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/splitcreekpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Idaho County (M-W) - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/idaho-county-m-w.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Pete King Fire Hit by Tree Fatalities 1934, Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, https://lessons.wildfire.gov/incident/pete-king-fire-hit-by-tree-fatalities-1934 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Split Creek Point, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/split-creek-point/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Split Creek Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/split-creek-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  7. Split Creek Point Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://www.nhlr.org/lookouts/us/id/split-creek-point-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: 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, 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

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