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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Grave Butte Lookout

Clearwater NF ground site on Grave Butte: 1928 tent camp, 1929 log cupola cabin, last manned 1940, buildings condemned 1954; no source describes what remains today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Buildings condemned 1954; Hartig (1981) then says Bill O'Brien went in to do the torch job, with no detail on the outcome; the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the site Gone; no source describes the site today

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
Hike-in site per Idaho Fire Lookouts; no trail or permission details in the sources read

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabLog cupola cabin with L-3 lookout cab, with shake-covered woodshed, root cellar and outhouse added laterThe design: Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.46132, −115.11564
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-grave-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 3.8 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. 1928 First staffedRanger Ralph Hand set up a tent camp on the south side of the peak as a seasonal detection pointSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1929 BuiltLog cupola cabin with L-3 lookout cab; construction began 1929. The Clearwater list's year column reads 1928 for the camp row; see resolved_conflictsSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1929 FireBald Mountain fire threatened the unfinished cabin; crew dug a trench and burned out the area inside itSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1930 StaffedEarnest Hartman and Harry Chenoweth sent to finish the cabin that summer, under Ranger Fred ShanerSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1940 Last staffedLast manned in 1940 per Hartig (1981)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1954 EventBuildings condemned; a packer salvaged usable items; Bill O'Brien then went in to do the torch job (what it destroyed is not described; year not given)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  7. 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.

Grave Butte rises to 6,190 feet in the Clearwater National Forest, in Idaho County, about 20 miles west of the Powell Ranger Station.1,2 The butte's first seasonal fire-detection use came in 1928, when Ranger Ralph Hand pitched a tent camp on its south flank, perhaps a quarter mile below the summit.3

Work on a log cupola cabin with an L-3 lookout cab began in 1929.1,3,4 Before it was finished, the Bald Mountain fire flared up and threatened the lookout.3 Ordered out, the crew first cut a trench around the camp and burned the ground inside it, and the area within the trench came through.3

By 1930 the district was in the hands of Ranger Fred Shaner.3 That summer he dispatched Earnest Hartman and Harry Chenoweth to complete the cabin.3

Sources give different dates for the end of the lookout.1,2,3,4 Louis Hartig's 1981 history of Lochsa district facilities, as reproduced on the Forest Lookouts site, says the butte was last manned in 1940 and that the buildings were condemned in 1954.3 The Clearwater list, Idaho Fire Lookouts and firelookout.com all give the 1950s for abandonment.1,2,4

After the condemnation, a packer was sent in first to salvage usable items.3 Bill O'Brien went in next to do the torch job.3

Today, the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the site as gone.5 Idaho Fire Lookouts calls it a hike-in site.2 The pages read do not say what, if anything, remains on the summit now, or whether visitors may go there.

  1. Grave Butte Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/gravebutte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Grave Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/grave-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Grave Butte, Forest Lookouts (Idaho), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/grave-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, 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, 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.