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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Grouse Point

Clearwater NF 30-foot L-4 tower 3 miles north of Lochsa RS, built 1933 and burned in the August 1934 Pete King Fire; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned in the August 1934 Pete King Fire and not used again; the Forest Service list says gone in 1934

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 labels the site as a hike-in

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with L-4 cab (Hartig 1981 calls the tower a log tower)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.39179, −115.33464
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-grouse-point-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 3.9 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. 1933 Built30-foot tower and L-4 cab; the Forest Lookouts entry and one Idaho Fire Lookouts page give 1934 insteadSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. 1933 First staffedTent camp set up with Russell Stadtman as lookout man (Hartig 1981, as quoted by Forest Lookouts)Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1934 BurnedBurned in the Pete King Fire in August 1934; the site was not used againSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  4. 1934 FirePete King Fire, started by lightning on August 11, 1934, in the Lochsa River CanyonSource: lessons.fs2c.usda.gov
  5. 1934 Last staffedTower manned for the first and last time in 1934 (Hartig 1981)Source: 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.

Grouse Point was a lookout in the Clearwater National Forest, in Idaho County, about three miles north of the Lochsa Ranger Station, at 5,000 feet.1,2

According to a 1981 history of the Lochsa Ranger District by Louis Hartig, as quoted on the Forest Lookouts site, a tent camp went up on the point in 1933, with Russell Stadtman as lookout man.3 Hartig says a 30-foot log tower and an L-4 cabin were built that year, and that the tower was manned for the first and last time in 1934.3

The descriptions of the tower do not match. The firelookout.com entry, the St. Joe-Clearwater Idaho Fire Lookouts page and the Forest Service list all describe a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, while the Forest Lookouts entry calls it round timber.1,4,2,3 Most sources date the tower to 1933, but one Idaho Fire Lookouts page and the Forest Lookouts entry give 1934.1,4,5,2,3

The lookout burned in the Pete King Fire in August 1934.1,4,2,3 Lightning started that fire early on the morning of August 11, 1934, in Idaho's Lochsa River Canyon, and the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center lists its final area at 60,000 acres, or 250,000 acres combined with the McLendon Butte Fire.6 The Forest Lookouts entry says the site was not used again.3

No source we read describes what remains of the point today, or whether the public may visit it. The Idaho Fire Lookouts page labels the site as a hike-in.4

  1. Grouse Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/grousepoint269.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho County (A-L), Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/idaho-county-a-l.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Grouse Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/grouse-point-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Grouse Point Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/grouse-point-lookout-2/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Pete King Fire Hit by Tree Fatalities 1934, Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, https://lessons.fs2c.usda.gov/incident/pete-king-fire-hit-by-tree-fatalities-1934 (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. 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.