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Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho

Lean-To Ridge

Clearwater NF 40-foot L-4 lookout on Lean-To Ridge, built about 1934 and destroyed in 1963; a 1931 newspaper already names a lookout there.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1963, per firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts and the 2016 Forest Service list

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 tower40-foot tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Clearwater County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.52240, −115.44823
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-lean-to-ridge

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 3.7 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. 1931 FireFire on Hemlock Creek and Lean-to Ridge scorched more than 5,000 acres; a newspaper report says the flames advanced toward the Lean-to Ridge LookoutSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 Built40-foot L-4 tower; patrol tree platform eight miles southwestSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  3. No record between 1934 and 1963
  4. 1963 DestroyedDestroyed, per all three listingsSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  5. 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.

Lean-To Ridge lies in the Clearwater National Forest, about 16 miles east of Pierce in Clearwater County, at 5,078 feet.1 The tower went up in 1934 as a 40-foot structure with an L-4 cab.1,2 Keeping Watch describes the L-4 as a 14-by-14-foot cabin and the first prefabricated design for living in a lookout.3 The listings also name a patrol tree platform eight miles to the southwest.1,2

The dates do not fully agree. A July 1931 newspaper report about a fire on Hemlock Creek and Lean-to Ridge says the flames were advancing toward the Lean-to Ridge Lookout.4 That is three years before the 1934 date in the other listings.1,2,5

The same report counted more than 5,000 acres of scorched timber on Hemlock Creek and Lean-to Ridge.4

The tower was destroyed in 1963.1,2,5 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.1,2,5 Visitors should not expect to find the tower standing.1,2

  1. Lean-To Ridge Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/leantoridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Lean-To Ridge, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/lean-to-ridge/ (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. Lean-to Ridge, Forest Lookouts (western US), https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/lean-to-ridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, list compiled June 2016, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (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, height, 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.