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Fire lookout · Custer/ Lemhi County, Idaho

White Goat Lookout

Flat-roofed log cabin on the Challis National Forest, dated to 1940; its planned L-4 cab was never finished and it was destroyed in 2000.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 2000 before its planned L-4 cab was finished.

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
Cab on a towerFlat-roofed log cabin; planned L-4 cab never completedThe design: L-4
Built of
Logs
Built
1940
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Challis National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Custer/ Lemhi County, Idaho
Coordinates
44.71953, −114.40651
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-white-goat

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 3.3 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. 1940 BuiltFlat-roofed log cabin. Forest Lookouts gives only the 1940s.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1940 and 2000
  3. 2000 DestroyedBoth pages give 2000. No cause is given in the pages read.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 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.

White Goat Lookout stood in the Challis National Forest, about 17 miles north-northwest of Challis, Idaho, at 9,421 feet.1,2 The site sat on the edge of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.1

Both pages date the building to 1940 and describe it as a flat-roofed cabin.1,2 The firelookout.com page calls it a log cabin.1 A third listing gives only the 1940s.3

The plan was to put an L-4 cab on top of the cabin, but that cab was never completed.1,2 Both pages say the cabin was destroyed in 2000.1,2

The cabin is gone, and none of the three pages describes what, if anything, remains of it at the site today.1,2,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts classes the site as a hike-in, and the pages read do not say whether it is open to visitors.2

  1. White Goat Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/whitegoat.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. White Goat Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/southern-idaho/white-goat-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. White Goat, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/white-goat.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

White Goat Lookout
White Goat LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, location, county, type, what it is built of, 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, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.