Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho
Larch Butte Lookout
Larch Butte lookout, Clearwater NF: 30-foot L-4 tower built 1933, abandoned and gone; no source describes what remains at the site.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as abandoned and gone; no source describes what remains at 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts classes it as a hike-in.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower30-foot L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1933
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Clearwater County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.53931, −115.52759
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-larch-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 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
- 1933 Built30-foot L-4 tower; all three lookout sources give 1933Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Larch Butte is a lookout site in the Clearwater National Forest, about 13 miles east-northeast of Pierce in Clearwater County.1,2 Its listed elevation is 5,539 feet.1,3,2
The lookout was a 30-foot tower with an L-4 cab, built in 1933.1,3,2
A Clearwater National Forest lookout list, compiled in June 2016, marks it abandoned. The Idaho Fire Lookouts page and firelookout.com both list it as gone.1,3,2,4
Idaho Fire Lookouts classes the site as a hike-in.3 No source read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, and none says whether the site is open to the public.1,3,2,4
- Larch Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/larchbutte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Larch Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/larch-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) 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
- 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
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts (U.S. Forest Service) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Larch Butte on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Larch Butte Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.