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Fire lookout · Shoshone County, Idaho

BM Hill Lookout

40-foot pole L-4 tower on BM Hill in Clearwater National Forest, built 1932 and destroyed 1973; footings and ruins remain on a gated, hike-in site.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1973; no source describes a standing structure

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Restricted access

Access is seasonal, gated or needs a permit. Check before you go. Road to the site is gated; Idaho Fire Lookouts walked in about half a mile. No source states the land's access rules.

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts calls it a hike-in; the road is gated and the last half mile was bushwhacked

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower40-foot pole L-4 tower on the south pointThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Shoshone County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.64972, −114.69220
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-bm-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 3.8 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. 1932 Built40-foot pole L-4 tower built atop the south pointSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. No record between 1932 and 1973
  3. 1973 DestroyedNo source gives a cause. A 2025 visit found melted glass and the visitors judged the site appeared to have burned downSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  4. 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.

BM Hill Lookout stood on the south point of BM Hill, in the Clearwater National Forest.1,2 A Clearwater lookout list from the Forest Service places it about nine miles north of the Powell Ranger Station, at 6,380 feet.3

The tower went up in 1932.1,2,3 It was a 40-foot pole tower of the L-4 design.1,2 The sources disagree on the county. The Idaho Lookouts list gives Shoshone County, while the Forest Lookouts index files the tower under Clearwater County.4,5

The tower was destroyed in 1973.1,2,3 A 2025 post by Idaho Fire Lookouts describes melted glass at the site and judges that the site seems to have burned.2

The same post describes cement footings, scattered ruins and artifacts, and part of a staircase that was still identifiable.2 The road to the site is gated, so the visitors walked in about half a mile and had to bushwhack through that stretch.2 Beyond that 2025 post, no source describes the site today, and none says whether the land is open to visitors.2,3

  1. BM Hill Fire Lookout Tower, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bmhill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. BM Hill Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/bm-hill-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 (Alphabetical List), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. BM Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/bm-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

BM Hill Lookout
BM Hill LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

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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: photos, 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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, 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.