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Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho

Bear Butte Lookout

Clearwater NF lookout tower with an L-4 cab, near Pierce, Idaho: built 1934, abandoned 1964, now gone. Warren Yahr is listed as its keeper in 1945-1948.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1964 and gone; no source describes what remains.

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
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts tags it as a hike-in site. No source describes the site today.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
U.S. Forest Service (Clearwater National Forest)
Land
Federal land
Location
Clearwater County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.64008, −115.36442
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-bear-butte

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 3.9 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. 1934 BuiltL-4 tower; 1934 given by firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts, Forest Lookouts and the June 2016 Clearwater NF listSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1945 StaffedWarren Yahr listed as keeper of Bear Butte Lookout 1945–1948Sources: idahofirelookouts.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. No record between 1945 and 1964
  4. 1964 AbandonedAbandoned in 1964 per firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and the Clearwater NF listSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, 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.

Bear Butte is a 5,393-foot peak in the Clearwater National Forest, about 24 miles northeast of Pierce.1,2 Its lookout was a tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1934.1,3,4,2

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists Warren Yahr as the person who staffed the lookout from 1945 to 1948.3,5 The page attributes that detail to his book, Smokechaser.3

A Clearwater National Forest list compiled in June 2016 gives 1964 as the year the lookout was abandoned.2 Firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts also date the abandonment to 1964 and call the site gone.1,3 Forest Lookouts gives no date and says only that the lookout was removed.4

Two platforms are also mentioned: a patrol platform 2.5 miles west atop Bugle, and a 20-foot platform about half a mile northeast.1,4

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains of the lookout today.1,3,4 Idaho Fire Lookouts tags the site as a hike-in.3

  1. Bear Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bearbutte267.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Bear Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/bear-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Bear Butte, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/bear-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Warren Yahr, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/lookout-staff/warren-yahr/ (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, 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.