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Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho

John Lewis Lookout

Clearwater County peak lookout: a 1914 log cabin, a 1933 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab, destroyed in 1963. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1963; no source describes what remains.

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

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1914
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
CTPA
Land
Unknown
Location
Clearwater County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.69383, −115.94645
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-john-lewis

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 3.6 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. 1914 BuiltLog cabin with tree platformSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. 1923 AlteredPlatform towerSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  3. 1933 Altered50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, cdil.lib.uidaho.edu
  4. No record between 1933 and 1963
  5. 1963 DestroyedSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.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.

The John Lewis Lookout stood about 20 miles northeast of Orofino, in Clearwater County, on a site listed at 4,218 feet.1,2

The earliest entry is from 1914: a log cabin with a tree platform.1,2 By 1923 the site had a platform tower.1,2 In 1933 a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab was recorded there.1,2 The University of Idaho's Keeping Watch page describes the L-4 as an early prefabricated cabin, 14x14, with production running until 1952.3 A patrol point two miles to the northwest is listed with the site.1,2

Both pages use the abbreviation CTPA, and neither spells it out.1,2 The likely expansion is the Clearwater Timber Protective Association, though neither lookout page confirms it. The Clearwater and Potlatch timber protective associations were formed separately in 1905, operated apart, and merged in 1966 into the Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protective Association.4

The site was destroyed in 1963.1,2 No source describes the site now, so what remains and whether the ground is open to the public are unknown. Idaho Fire Lookouts tags it as drive-up.2 A drive-up tag on a site listed as destroyed may be out of date, so it does not settle the access question.

  1. John Lewis Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/johnlewis.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. John Lewis Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/john-lewis-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Cabin Architecture, Keeping Watch, University of Idaho, https://cdil.lib.uidaho.edu/keeping-watch/about/cabin-architecture.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protective Association, cptpa.com, https://www.cptpa.com/ (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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, 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.