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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Disgrace Butte Lookout

Nez Perce NF 30-foot pole L-4 tower built 1935, with staff listed for 1949 and 1952; gone by 1963, and no remains are described.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone by 1963; no source describes what remains on the 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
Labelled hike-in on the Idaho Fire Lookouts page

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.90875, −115.18319
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-disgrace-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 4.0 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 Built30-foot pole L-4 towerSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. 1949 StaffedGail Renshaw on the page's staff listSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  3. 1952 StaffedEdwin Morris on the page's staff listSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1959 EventStill standing in 1959Source: firelookout.com
  5. 1963 EventListed as gone by 1963Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, firelookout.org
  6. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is 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.

The Disgrace Butte lookout was an L-4 tower on a 30-foot pole, put up in 1935 in the Nez Perce National Forest, about 14 miles northeast of Elk City.1,2 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page gives the site's elevation as 6,589 feet.2 Both pages say the tower may have taken the place of the Vermillion Peak lookout, about two miles northeast, but neither gives further detail.1,2 The FFLA's Idaho list has a separate Vermillion Peak entry, typed Ground and also marked gone.3

The page's Known Staff list names Gail Renshaw for 1949 and Edwin Morris for 1952, and the Morris entry cites a former lookout register.2

Firelookout.com reports the tower standing in 1959 and gone by 1963.1 The Idaho Fire Lookouts page also lists it as gone in 1963.2 The FFLA list records it as a tower that is gone.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, is left at the site today. The Idaho Fire Lookouts page labels it hike-in, so the site is reached on foot.2

  1. Disgrace Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/disgrace.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Disgrace Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/disgrace-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho fire lookout list, firelookout.org (FFLA), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Disgrace Butte Lookout
Disgrace Butte 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, 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.