FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Vermillion Peak Lookout

1924 log cabin with cupola on Vermillion Peak near Elk City (Nez Perce NF); abandoned by the late 1930s and listed as gone. No remains described.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The cabin was abandoned by the late 1930s and is listed as gone. No source describes what remains.

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

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cablog cabin with a cupolaThe design: Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1924
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.92895, −115.13701
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-vermillion-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 3.7 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. 1924 BuiltLog cabin with a cupola on Vermillion PeakSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. 1930 AbandonedDated only to the 1930s; the firelookout.com page says abandoned by the late 1930sSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. 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.

Vermillion Peak Lookout stood on Vermillion Peak in the Nez Perce National Forest, about 16 miles northeast of Elk City, Idaho.1,2 The lookout was a log cabin with a cupola, built in 1924.1,3 The Idaho listing gives the peak's elevation as 7,575 feet.2

The firelookout.com page says the cabin was no longer in use by the late 1930s, and the Idaho listing dates the abandonment to the 1930s.1,2 Both say it may have been replaced by a lookout on Disgrace Butte, two miles southwest.1,2 The Disgrace Butte listing describes that tower as a 1935 pole tower, gone by 1963, and says it may have replaced Vermillion Peak.4

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the Vermillion Peak site as gone.5 The Idaho listing calls the site a hike-in.2 We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the peak today, or whether the site is open to the public.

  1. Vermillion Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/vermillion295.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Vermillion Peak Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/vermillion-peak-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Log Cabins with Cupolas, Nez Perce National Forest, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259210 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Disgrace Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/disgrace-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Idaho Lookouts (by Region), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id/id-rg/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Vermillion Peak Lookout
Vermillion Peak LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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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: 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
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: 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

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