FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Boundary County, Idaho

Wall Mountain Lookout

Wall Mountain 30-foot pole tower with L-4 cab in the Kaniksu NF, Boundary County, Idaho; built 1937, destroyed 1958; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1958 per two listings, with no cause given; the Forest Lookouts page marks it Removed with no date

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
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kaniksu National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Boundary County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.84664, −116.23854
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-wall-mountain

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 4.5 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. 1933 StaffedFrank Heath named by firelookout.com; the same page dates the tower to 1937Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1937 Built30-foot pole tower with L-4 cab; patrol point two miles southeastSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. 1939 StaffedClifford Middleton, citing a September 28, 1939 Bonners Ferry Herald itemSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1944 StaffedPearl "Peppy" Plato named by firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  5. 1958 DestroyedDestroyed in 1958 per two listings; no cause givenSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.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 Wall Mountain site sits at 5,120 feet, about 10 miles north-northeast of Bonners Ferry, in the Kaniksu National Forest of Boundary County, Idaho.1,2 The lookout went up in 1937 as a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, and a patrol point lay two miles to the southeast.1,2

Three people are named across the listings. firelookout.com gives Frank Heath for 1933 and Pearl "Peppy" Plato for 1944.1 Idaho Fire Lookouts gives Clifford Middleton for 1939, citing a September 28, 1939 item in the Bonners Ferry Herald.2 The 1933 name comes four years before the 1937 build date on the same page, and we could not reconcile the two.1

Both lookout listings date its destruction to 1958, but neither gives a cause.1,2 The Forest Lookouts page gives no year and marks the tower only as "Removed," and the Forest Fire Lookout Association index shows it as gone.3,4

Today, no source we read describes what, if anything, is left on the summit, or whether the site is open to visitors.

  1. Wall Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/wallmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Wall Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/northern-idaho/wall-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Wall Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/wall-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. 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. 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, height, status, 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.