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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Barren Hill

Nez Perce National Forest patrol tower of c.1934 (or a 1931 L-4 cabin); abandoned in the 1940s and now listed as gone, with dates in dispute.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in the 1940s; the Idaho lookout list marks it Tower Gone and Forest Lookouts says removed

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
Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site Hike-In.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cabinThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.25601, −114.98449
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-barren-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 4.1 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. 1931 Built10-foot L-4 cabin per the Clearwater list and the 1981 Hartig history; may be a different structure from the 1934 towerSources: idaholookouts.weebly.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. 1934 Built40-foot pole patrol tower, c.1934 per three pagesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1940 Abandoned1940s per three pages; decade onlySources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1940 Last staffedClearwater list says last manned in the 1940s or 50s; decade onlySource: fs.usda.gov
  5. 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.

Barren Hill is a patrol lookout site in the Nez Perce National Forest.1,2 Sources disagree on when it went up. Firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and Forest Lookouts all describe a 40-foot patrol tower built around 1934.1,2,3 The Clearwater National Forest list instead records a 10-foot L-4 cabin.4 A 1981 history by Louis Hartig, quoted on Forest Lookouts, says the Selway National Forest built an L-4 cabin on a 10-foot log tower in 1931.3 Forest Lookouts says its own sources seem to conflict on the construction date and tower height.3

Three pages say the tower was abandoned in the 1940s.1,2,3 The Clearwater list says instead that it was last manned in the 1940s or 50s.4

The Idaho lookout list marks the tower as gone, and Forest Lookouts says it was removed.5,3 Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site Hike-In.2 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the spot is open to visitors.2,3,4

  1. Barren Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/barrenhill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Barren Hill – Idaho Fire Lookouts, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/barren-hill/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Barren Hill - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/barren-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts (list compiled June 2016), USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Idaho lookout list, firelookout.org, 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, 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, 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.