Fire lookout · Benewah County, Idaho
West Dennis Lookout
West Dennis lookout, Benewah County: a 10-foot L-4 tower built 1931, listed gone with no date; a 2022 visit found guide-wire supports and a benchmark.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone with no date in Kresek's book, as reported by Idaho Fire Lookouts. A September 2022 visit found guide-wire eye-hole supports, a lumber piece and a benchmark.
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
- Short hike to the site, per a September 2022 Idaho Fire Lookouts post
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a 10-foot towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1931
- Height
- 10 ft (3.0 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- St. Joe National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Benewah County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 47.09243, −116.71923
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-west-dennis
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 3.9 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
- 1931 Built10-foot tower with an L-4 cab, per Rex's page (citing Kresek), firelookout.com and Idaho Fire LookoutsSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
West Dennis was a short lookout tower on the St. Joe National Forest, in Benewah County.1,2 Rex's Fire Lookout Page and Firelookout.com both date it to 1931, when it stood 10 feet tall with an L-4 cab.1,2 Rex's page gives its location as the code 43N-3W-9, which in the standard land-survey format means section 9 of township 43 North, range 3 West.1 Idaho Fire Lookouts reports the same 1931 tower, but lists the forest as the Clearwater National Forest.3
The tower is listed as gone.3,4 Idaho Fire Lookouts notes that Rey Kresek's book, Fire Lookout Towers of the Northwest, lists it that way but gives no date for its removal.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list also marks it as gone.4
A September 2022 post from Idaho Fire Lookouts describes a brief hike to the site.3 On that visit the writers reported eye-hole supports for guide wires, a piece of lumber that was likely from the tower, and a benchmark.3
- West Dennis - Forest Lookouts (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/west-dennis.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- West Dennis Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/westdennis.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- West Dennis Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/west-dennis-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho Lookouts - Forest Fire Lookout Association, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Photos
Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) Gave us: dates, 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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) Gave us: design, height, 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- West Dennis on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- West Dennis Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
- West Dennis on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.