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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

Taylor Peak Lookout

A 1931 camp, a 1934 L-4 cab on Coeur d'Alene NF's Taylor Peak, called in during 1936 and destroyed in 1959; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1959. No source describes what remains at 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 lists the site as hike-in.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
47.79325, −115.88450
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-taylor-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 4.3 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. 1931 EventListed as a camp, not a cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 BuiltL-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1936 StaffedLookout called in during rain and cool weather, per a Spokane Chronicle item quoted on the Forest Lookouts siteSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1936 and 1959
  5. 1959 DestroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 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.

The peak is listed at 5,585 feet in Shoshone County, on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest about 22 miles north of Wallace.1

The first entry for the site, dated 1931, calls it a camp rather than a cab.1,2 A lookout cab followed in 1934, built to the L-4 design.1,2 That design was a standard 14-by-14-foot building that Region 1 drew up in 1929.3

In early September 1936 the lookout was called in because rain and cool weather had lowered the danger of forest fires, according to a Spokane Chronicle item quoted on the Forest Lookouts site.2

The cab was destroyed in 1959.1,4,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as a hike-in one.4

No source I read describes what remains at the site today, or whether the peak is open to visitors.

  1. Taylor Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/taylorpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Taylor Peak, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/taylor-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Lookouts display text (12/99 copy), Payette National Forest Heritage Program, https://objects.lib.uidaho.edu/taylorarchive/b08-PayetteNationalForestLiterature08.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Taylor Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/cda-region/taylor-peak-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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: what it is built of, design, agency, ownership, links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. 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.