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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Wood Hump Lookout

Bitterroot NF L-4 cab on a pole tower, built 1940, abandoned 1967, now listed as gone; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1967. Firelookout.com says it was still there in 1974 but has since departed. Idaho Fire Lookouts and the Forest Fire Lookout Association list it as gone. No source describes the site now.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Idaho Fire Lookouts marks the lookout as hike-in on Bitterroot National Forest land. No source describes the route or current access.

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Hike-in per Idaho Fire Lookouts. No source describes the site now.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a pole tower; pole height 15 feet or 20 feet (sources disagree)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1940
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Bitterroot National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.55167, −114.67050
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-wood-hump

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 3.5 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. 1940 BuiltL-4 cab on a pole tower. Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts give a 15-foot pole; Rex's page gives 20 feet.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1940 and 1961
  3. 1961 StaffedLavon Andrews listed as lookout personnel; the only staffing name in the sources.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1967 AbandonedAbandoned, per all three lookout pages.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1974 EventStill there in 1974 but has since departed, per firelookout.com.Source: firelookout.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 Wood Hump lookout was an L-4 cab on a pole tower in the Bitterroot National Forest, built in 1940.1,2,3 The sources disagree on the height of the pole.1,2,3 Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts give 15 feet, while Rex's Fire Lookout Page gives 20 feet.1,2,3

The sources name one person who staffed the lookout: Lavon Andrews, listed for 1961.1,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts also asks readers to add what they know about the staff and the dates.2

The tower was abandoned in 1967.1,2,3 Firelookout.com says it was still in place in 1974 but has since departed.1 Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the lookout as gone, and so does the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list.2,4

Idaho Fire Lookouts gives the elevation as 7,224 feet and marks the lookout as hike-in.2 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.

  1. Wood Hump Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/woodhump.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Wood Hump Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/wood-hump-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Wood Hump, Forest Lookouts, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/wood-hump.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: 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: 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, status, agency, access, staffing, 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.