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Eagle Peak Lookout

Drive-InDestroyed
Elevation: 5199′IDL / Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation

History

1934 – 50′ Pole tower with L-4 cab
1963 – 53′ Treated timber tower with R-6 flat cab
1970? – Last in service
1998 – Torn down

Known Staff

1944 – Mrs. Grace Shellman (*Kellogg Evening News)
1948 – Mr. & Mrs. Fred Davis (*Kellogg Evening News)
1952 – Mr. & Mrs. Douglas Pierce (*Kellogg Evening News)
1953 – Mr. & Mrs. Rodney Durton (*Kellogg Evening News)
1954 – Mr. & Mrs. Carl Wentland (*Kellogg Evening News)
1963 – Leslie Hawkins (*Kellogg Evening News)
1971 – Staffed by Mark Grorud
1972 – Staffed by (female, named unknown)
19?? – Staffed by Ole Hilde, dates uncertain (*Shoshone News Press)

Courtesy: Gary Weber

Mark Grorud, who staffed Eagle Peak in 1971, was very kind to share some of his memories from his summer there:

I was assigned to Eagle Peak, a lookout about halfway between Cataldo and St. Maries, Idaho.  I could drive up to the lookout, but it was fairly isolated.  It was a 60-foot wooden tower.  There was a natural spring about a mile down the road where I went to fill jerry cans with water.  There were usually mountain lion tracks around the spring.  Once a week, I went down to Pinehurst, where I got a nice bath at the home of some friends, bought groceries for the week, and picked up my mail at the office. There were a lot of golden eagles on Eagle Peak.  Some evenings I counted as many as 20 roosting in the trees below the lookout, with their wings outstretched in the fading sunlight.  Once in a great while, an eagle would perch on the railing of the walkway around the lookout.  Otherwise, it was a fairly calm summer.  The weather was cool and damp, and I actually only spotted a couple of small smokes all summer. 

The first involved the first-year lookout on Eagle Peak.  She called me late one night on the radio and was just terrified.  Someone was climbing the wooden steps of her tower and when she called out to them, they stopped climbing.  She had the trap door locked but she was terrified someone was trying to get her.  For some reason she could not contact the boss, but I was able to.  He jumped in the pickup and immediately headed up to Eagle Peak with a gun in his lap.  In the meantime, I spent the better part of an hour just trying to calm her down.

The summer of 1972 on Eagle Peak staffed by a new female lookout: we had a small platform that we could load the water cans as well as groceries onto, and then winch it up to the cabin.  There were some sisal ropes that held the platform level at each of the four corners.  On Eagle Peak, there was a herd of wild horses in the area.  That night, they had gathered around the bottom of the tower.  They were grabbing the rope with their teeth.  When they let loose, the little wooden platform would drop to the ground.  It sounded just like someone clumping up the stairs in heavy boots.  It was too dark to see the horses.  She wasn’t about to look over the edge.  And when she called out to them, they stopped, of course.  Kind of a small event, but that night it seemed like the end of the world for her.”

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