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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

State Line Lookout

St. Joe NF L-4 cab on a spur near Ward Peak, Shoshone County: built in the 1930s, destroyed in the 1960s; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Forest Fire Lookout Association lists type Ground, status Gone; Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts say destroyed in the 1960s

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
Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site Hike-In; no access details given

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 cab atop a spurThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
St. Joe National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.25469, −115.37585
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-state-line

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 4.3 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. 1930 BuiltL-4 cab atop spur, dated only to the 1930s by sourcesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. No record between 1930 and 1960
  3. 1960 DestroyedSources say only 'the 1960s' (Firelookout.com: Destroyed 1960s; Idaho Fire Lookouts: 1960's Destroyed); no source gives 1960, so 1960 is a placeholder for that decade, as 1930 is for the 1930s elsewhere in this record. The story says 1960s, per the corrections entrySources: firelookout.com, 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.

State Line Lookout stood in Shoshone County, Idaho, on the St. Joe National Forest, about 20 miles east of Avery.1 Firelookout.com gives its elevation as 6,250 feet.1

It was an L-4 cab on a spur about three-quarters of a mile south-southeast of Ward Peak, and it dates to the 1930s.1,2 Neither page gives an exact year for that.1,2 Firelookout.com credits its photograph to Alvin Friedland.1

Both Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts say the cab was destroyed in the 1960s.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it with the type "Ground" and the status "Gone."3

No source we read describes what, if anything, is left at the site, or whether it is open to visitors. Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the lookout "Hike-In Destroyed."2

  1. State Line Fire Lookout Cabin, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/stateline.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. State Line Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/state-line-lookout/ (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.