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Fire lookout · Valley County, Idaho

Teapot Dome Lookout

An L-4 cab built in 1930 at Valley County's Teapot Dome, moved to Miners Peak in 1948; the original site is not described as standing today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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

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
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Payette National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Valley County, Idaho
Coordinates
44.91042, −115.73174
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-teapot-dome

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

  1. 1930 BuiltL-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1930 and 1948
  3. 1948 MovedCab taken apart and moved to Miners PeakSources: firelookout.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com, nhlr.org
  4. No record between 1948 and 1974
  5. 1974 Replaced by a new structureIdaho Fire Lookouts: R-6 flat cab replaced the L-4 at Miners PeakSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  6. 1983 Replaced by a new structureIdaho Fire Lookouts dates the R-4 two-story log cab at Miners Peak to 1983; the register and Firelookout.com give 1986Sources: nhlr.org, firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  7. 1986 BuiltTwo-story cab at Miners Peak, per the register and Firelookout.comSources: nhlr.org, firelookout.com
  8. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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 Teapot Dome lookout stood in Valley County on the Payette National Forest, about 18 miles east of McCall, at an elevation of 5,518 feet.1,2 An L-4 cab went up there in 1930.1,2,3 The L-4 was a standard 14-by-14-foot lookout building that Region 1 designed in 1929. It could be made from dimensional lumber or from logs.4

In the 1950s an annual Guard School used the site.1,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts says it has not yet documented who staffed the lookout.2

In 1948 the cab was taken apart and moved to Miners Peak, also on the Payette National Forest.1,3,5 The register and Firelookout.com both say that move started the Miners Peak site.6,7

That cab was later replaced. Idaho Fire Lookouts says a flat cab took its place in 1974 and dates the two-story log cab that followed to 1983.5 The register and Firelookout.com both give 1986 for the two-story cab, so the sources disagree on the date.6,7

Today, Idaho Fire Lookouts says the Miners Peak tower is staffed for fire detection, and it lists the site as a hike-in one.5

Nothing I read describes what remains of the Teapot Dome site today. None of the pages says whether any part of the 1930 cab survives in the present Miners Peak tower.

  1. Teapot Dome Fire Lookout Cabin, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/teapotdome.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Teapot Dome Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/teapot-dome-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Teapot Dome, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/teapot-dome.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Lookouts display text (12/99 copy), Payette National Forest Heritage Program, https://objects.lib.uidaho.edu/taylorarchive/b08-PayetteNationalForestLiterature08.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Miners Peak, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/west-central/miners-peak/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Miners Peak Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/id/miners-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  7. Miners Peak Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/minerspeak.html (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. 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, agency, 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.