Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho
Blacktail Butte Lookout
Nez Perce NF lookout site on Blacktail Butte: L-4 cab on a tower in the 1930s, abandoned around 1948, listed as gone; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned around 1948 and listed as gone; no source we read describes what, if anything, 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?
- Unknown
- Trail
- Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as hike-in; the tower is gone
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Nez Perce National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Idaho County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 45.89062, −115.99708
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-blacktail-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.
Downloads about 3.7 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
- 1948 AbandonedAbandoned around 1948: firelookout.com 'Abandoned 1948'; Idaho Fire Lookouts '1948 – Abandoned'; Forest Lookouts 'c.1948'; Forest Service list 'abandoned 1948 +/-'. No built event, because the 1930s build date has no exact year in any source.Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Blacktail Butte sits about six miles east-southeast of Grangeville, Idaho, in the Nez Perce National Forest.1,2 Idaho Fire Lookouts gives its elevation as 4,600 feet.3
In the 1930s an L-4 cab stood on a tower at the west end of the ridge.4,3 The Forest Lookouts page marks that date with a question mark, so the exact year is uncertain.4
A patrol tower stood about two miles northeast, atop North Blacktail.2,3
Sources agree that the lookout was abandoned around 1948.1,3,4,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the tower as gone.5
Pages for a different lookout, Blacktail (Frisco Peak), say a log cabin stood atop Blacktail Butte in 1926.6 The Forest Service list puts that cabin in a separate Blacktail row, not the Blacktail Butte row, so this history starts with the 1930s tower.2
Idaho Fire Lookouts lists the site as a hike-in and marks the tower as abandoned and gone.3 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the butte today, or whether the ground is open to visitors.
- Blacktail Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/blacktailbutte291.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Nez Perce National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259204 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Blacktail Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/blacktail-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Blacktail Butte, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/blacktail-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Blacktail (Frisco Peak) Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://firelookout.com/id/blacktailfrisco.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) 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
- 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
- Blacktail Butte (Forest Lookouts (Idaho)) (opens another site)
- Nez Perce National Forest Lookouts (USDA Forest Service) (opens another site)
- Blacktail (Frisco Peak) Fire Lookout Tower (firelookout.com) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Blacktail Butte on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Blacktail Butte Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.