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Fire lookout · Bonner County, Idaho

Blacktail Mountain

Coeur d'Alene forest lookout on the Blacktail ridge: 1927 cabin, 1936 40-foot L-4 tower, destroyed 1947. Hike-in site; no remains of the cabin or tower described.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower destroyed in 1947. No source describes what remains of the cabin or tower; one photo caption says trees overgrow the views from the Butler Mountain lookout site.

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
Drive up Blacktail Road to NF 230, then hike from the Maiden Rock Trailhead; the ridge leads left to Butler or right to Blacktail.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Type unknownL-4 cab on a 40-foot towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1927
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Coeur d'Alene National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Bonner County, Idaho
Coordinates
48.11880, −116.51881
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-blacktail-mountain-2

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 4.2 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. 1926 EventCamp, possibly on the high pointSource: willhiteweb.com
  2. 1927 Built10-by-10-foot cabin on the north end of the ridgeSource: willhiteweb.com
  3. 1931 EventLookout killed by lightning in the cabin; sources differ on date (June 21 or 23), age (23 or 19) and first name (Glen, Ben or James)Sources: willhiteweb.com, lessons.wildfire.gov
  4. 1936 Built40-foot tower with an L-4 cab, on Butler MountainSources: willhiteweb.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1947 DestroyedTower destroyedSources: willhiteweb.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 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.

A camp came first on Blacktail Mountain in 1926, which a local history says may have sat on the high point.1 A 10-by-10-foot cabin followed in 1927 at the north end of the ridge.1

That cabin was the scene of a death.1 A federal wildland fire lessons-learned record says Glen B. Butler, 23, was on duty as the lookout when lightning killed him on June 21, 1931.2 The local history dates the strike to June 23 and gives his age as 19.1 It names him James in the June 23 passage but calls him Ben everywhere else.1 The sources disagree on the day, his age and his first name.

The same history places the cabin and the later tower on Butler Mountain, which it describes as the north end of Blacktail Mountain.1 A 40-foot tower with an L-4 cab went up in 1936, and it was destroyed in 1947.3,1

Some lists describe a different Blacktail Mountain lookout on the Kaniksu National Forest, six miles north of Nordman, with a 10-foot tower built in 1932 and destroyed in 1941.4,5 Those dates belong to that other site, not to this one.

Today the site is reached on foot. Drive east up Blacktail Road from Highway 95 near Cocolalla Lake and turn onto NF 230, which ends at the Maiden Rock Trailhead.1 From the trail, the ridge runs one way to Butler and the other way to the Blacktail summit.1 One photo caption says the Butler Mountain lookout site has trees overgrowing its views, but no source describes what remains of the cabin or tower.1

  1. Blacktail Mountain and Butler Lookout, WillhiteWeb, http://willhiteweb.com/idaho_lookouts/blacktail_mountain/ben_butler_033.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Blacktail Lookout Hit by Lightning Fatality 1931, Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, https://lessons.wildfire.gov/incident/blacktail-lookout-hit-by-lightning-fatality-1931 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Blacktail Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/blacktail-mountain1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Blacktail Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Fire Lookout, https://www.firelookout.com/id/blacktail.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Blacktail Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/blacktail-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: name, location, county, design, height, status, 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
  2. 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.