FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho

Big Horn Point Lookout

Clearwater NF site: 1935 camp, 1937 30 ft pole L-4 tower, 20 ft L-6 patrol tower nearby; listed as ruins, one Idaho list says tower gone.

Ruins: Only footings or remains are left. Listed as Ruins by firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and the June 2016 Forest Service list. A firelookout.org list says Tower Gone.

Visit & stay

Ruins: footings or remains only. There is no structure 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

Facts

Status
Ruins
Type
Cab on a towerL-4The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Clearwater County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.62261, −115.45154
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-big-horn-point

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. 1935 EventCamp on the site before the tower was builtSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. 1937 Built30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab; 20-foot L-6 patrol tower half a mile southwestSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  3. No record between 1937 and 2016
  4. 2016 EventForest Service list compiled June 2016 gives the site as RuinsSource: fs.usda.gov
  5. TodayRuinsOnly footings or remains are left. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

Big Horn Point is in Clearwater County, Idaho, about 18 miles northeast of Pierce. Its elevation is 4,659 feet.1

The Clearwater National Forest is the agency listed for it.1,2 A Forest Service list places it in section 21, township 38 north, range 8 east.3

The site began as a camp in 1935.1 In 1937 a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab went up.1,2,3 A 20-foot L-6 patrol tower stood half a mile southwest.1,2

Three sources describe the site as ruins: firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts, and a Forest Service list compiled in June 2016.1,2,3 A firelookout.org list of Idaho lookouts instead labels the tower "Tower Gone."4

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in.2 Apart from the ruins and Tower Gone labels, no source we read describes the site today.1,2,3,4

  1. Big Horn Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bighornpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Big Horn Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/big-horn-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho lookouts 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: 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.