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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Ant Hill Lookout

Clearwater NF 10-foot L-4 lookout in Idaho County; built 1931 or 1932, abandoned after 1933, condemned and burned in 1946; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Condemned and burned in 1946; no source describes what remains at the site

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. On Clearwater National Forest land; the Idaho Fire Lookouts site files it as a hike-in site

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Hartig says trail #225 from Fish Creek was built in 1931 to reach the site

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower10-foot round native timber tower with an L-4 lookout cabinThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
10 ft (3.0 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.34051, −115.49145
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-ant-hill

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 4.0 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. 1932 Builtfirelookout.com, the Idaho Fire Lookouts site and the 2016 Forest Service list give 1932; Hartig's 1981 history dates the trail and tower work to 1931Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1933 AbandonedAbandoned after the 1933 season; lookouts set up that year on Boundary Peak and Frenchman Butte covered nearly the same viewSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1946 DestroyedCondemned and burned in a forest-wide cleanup of surplus buildings (Hartig); the Forest Lookouts summary gives duplicated seen areas as the reasonSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com, fs.usda.gov
  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.

Ant Hill Lookout stood on a ridge above Ant Creek in Idaho County, about 18 miles southeast of Pierce, at 4,439 feet.1,2

Two workers built trail #225 from Fish Creek to the site.2 Louis Hartig's 1981 history of the Lochsa Ranger District, quoted on the Forest Lookouts site, dates that work to 1931.2 Other sources date the tower itself to 1932.1,3,4

Hartig says two carpenters poured four concrete piers for a ten-foot tower, and that an L-4 lookout cabin was assembled on top of it.2 Use of the site ended after the 1933 season.2 Hartig says lookouts set up that year on Boundary Peak and Frenchman Butte already covered nearly the same view.2

The empty tower stood with rotting timbers until 1946.2 Hartig says it was then condemned and burned in a forest-wide sweep of unneeded buildings.2 The Forest Lookouts summary gives a different reason, duplicated views, but also says it was condemned and burned.2 The firelookout.com page and a 2016 Forest Service list both record it as destroyed in 1946.1,4

The land is national forest, and the Idaho Fire Lookouts site files Ant Hill as a hike-in site.1,3 No source we found describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.

  1. Ant Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/anthill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Ant Hill, Forest Lookouts (quoting Louis Hartig, Historic Facilities of the Lochsa Ranger District, 1981), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/ant-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Ant Hill Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/ant-hill-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (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: 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
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, 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.